


sirens & sleepless nights

by satirrian



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Fictional Modern Setting, Fluff and Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Injured Zuko (Avatar), M/M, POV Sokka (Avatar), Sokka is an Awkward Trainwreck, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, katara is done with everyones shit, takes place in Ba Sing Se but after the Fire Nation took it over, toph has a seeing eye dog, zuko is a smoker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 54,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22982491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satirrian/pseuds/satirrian
Summary: Life can be pretty hard living in a city under a totalitarian regime. Between adhering to the ridiculous curfew, keeping himself from being gunned down by a passing patrolman, and paying his unnecessary tolls to the state for, say, breathing, Sokka has his hands full just getting to work. Add aiding a resistance group on top of that, and Sokka should really be getting paid for this.Then, one night, Sokka finds an injured patrolman collapsed in the street, who tells him with blood on his lips, “If the patrol finds me, I’m dead.”
Relationships: Aang/Katara - Background, Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 763
Kudos: 3637





	1. patrols & petrichor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Setting Notes:  
> This is a Modern AU of the ATLA setting, meaning that our modern day countries do not exist. The countries within this story are fiction. The Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom have both been renamed to fit a modern schema, i.e. China is not called the Kingdom of China, because it isn't a kingdom anymore. 
> 
> Fire Nation - Pyre/ Pyrian Empire  
> Earth Kingdom - Tera
> 
> Ba Sing Se is a modern day capital city similar to Beijing or Tokyo, with modern day amenities like cars, subways, cell phones, and TVs. 
> 
> Character Notes:  
> All characters are somewhere in their late twenties.  
> All references to 'the Avatar' in this story are not towards a person, i.e. Aang, but towards a group of people. It's the name of their resistance group, with Aang being its leader.

Outside Sokka’s apartment in the Lower Ring, the streetlight flickered. A dim circle of black pavement and the edge of a parked car popped into and out of existence. Sokka leaned his chin on his hand as he gazed at it, thinking about how the streets were so empty, nowadays. Nobody ever broke curfew. 

It would be a sleepless night, he knew. He could tell by the uneasy energy settled in his bones, the way he couldn’t stop himself from thinking. Sokka thought about a time before Pyre had taken this city, back when he and his sister had moved there to escape the war. Well, jokes on them. Look how that had turned out. 

Sokka started to pull himself away from the window. Maybe staring at the ceiling was his answer, not staring out at the street, where he’d watch the night patrols pass in red-black shadows, spiked from the assault rifles slung over their backs. 

The light under the streetlight flickered again. Sokka paused and looked down at the street, watching a man stumble from the darkness of the night to the single rusted lamppost. He watched as the man grabbed it with a gloved hand, and he watched as the man’s knees gave out like the strings cut from a puppet, head bowed as if in prayer. 

Sokka’s breath felt loud in the dimness of his empty apartment. He watched the man try to get back to his feet. The man’s right foot slipped, and he fell harshly onto his side, curling up around his midsection. Sokka blinked, and thought for a second that the man was dead, lying prone in the middle of the street. But then the man tried to push himself back up again, and that was when Sokka snapped. 

It happened with the sudden clarity of thought that he found that day he joined the Avatar, and the thought was this: NO. 

_No, I won’t let this happen._

_I won’t let this happen to me._

_I won’t let this happen to the world._

Sokka grabbed his coat and cell phone, pulled on his boots, and as his hand laid on his door handle, he thought: _Sorry, Katara._ He pushed it open. 

Four flights of stairs. The bottom floor was less of a lobby and more of a long, unlit hallway leading to the wooden front door. Sokka emerged out into the night, his breath misting in the air. 

The man had managed to get his hand back on the pole of the streetlight. His head was still bowed, his hair tousled over his eyes, mouth tugged into a grimace. Sokka studied him closely as he approached, hands in his coat pockets. The man’s black hair was rough and tousled, stuck in that middle line between hair long enough to reach his chin and short enough to not cover his eyes. He was wearing one of those tailored, sharp-shouldered, buttoned-up jackets with tails. His gloves were leather, fingerless and black, his pants practical black cargo, tucked into mud covered army boots. 

The jacket was dark red. A patrolman’s jacket. Sokka took another step, and the yellow fire crest on the man’s lapel flickered at him, like a taunt. 

Sokka stopped a foot away, wondering if he should have brought a weapon. 

He wasn’t sure if the man had seen him until the patrolman spoke, his voice scratchy like pitted stone, “Are you going to kill me?”

Sokka blinked. He realized that he hadn’t expected the man to talk, because he hadn’t, up until this point, expected the man to be real. Sokka found himself replying before he thought better of it. 

“Do I need to?” Sokka said, eyes flickering down to where the patrolman’s free hand was clutching desperately at his side. If there was blood, Sokka couldn’t tell it from the color of his jacket. “I think you’re already halfway there, buddy.”

The man coughed, or it might have been a wheeze. His hand tightened on the pole, as if to pull himself back up, but he couldn’t do much more than tighten his fist. “Don’t you fucking pity me,” he said, and the venom in the patrolman’s voice made Sokka want to take a step back. “Don’t you dare fucking pity me.”

“Ease off there, pal,” Sokka said, and he wasn’t sure what expression he was making, at the moment, but it felt a lot like the stubborn frown he made when Katara disagreed with him. “Do I look like I’m pitying you?” 

“Get lost,” the patrolman spat with enough energy that he finally lost his grip on the pole, collapsing on all fours. He panted at the ground and Sokka realized that he had instinctively reached out, as if to catch him. 

Sokka pulled his hand back into his pocket and cursed at himself, because he knew why he had come out under the light of the streetlight that night. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, but not if he should— not if the man was a patrolman. 

“Fuck,” Sokka heard the man say faintly. 

Neither of them said another thing. Sokka felt like he should go back into his apartment, but the idea of leaving the man out in the street for the next patrol felt wrong. He couldn’t say why. A patrolman shouldn’t have anything to fear from the night patrol, right?

Well, he knew what Aang would say. 

He also knew what Katara would say. She’d tell him to go back inside. This was a problem that had nothing to do with him. Who knew what kind of things this patrolman had done? Terrorized old women. Attacked kids on the way to school. Burnt buildings to the ground. Separated children from their mothers. 

“God fucking dammit,” the patrolman panted. “I was so close. So—” his breath wheezed in his throat, “—So damn close.” 

“Close to what?” Sokka found himself asking. 

For the first time, the patrolman managed to lift his head and meet Sokka’s eyes. Sokka saw, for the first time, the scar marring the left side of the patrolman’s face, an angry, twisted red patch of skin. Sokka saw his eyes too, yellow and glistening. The patrolman clenched his teeth and rasped, “I was going to do the right thing.”

In the distance, Sokka heard a police siren. It howled through the night air, a lonely, keening noise. 

“Listen,” the patrolman said, on his hands and knees, refusing to look away from Sokka’s eyes. “If the patrol finds me, I’m dead.” 

Sokka licked his lips, and he knew he should walk back inside his apartment building and never look back but instead he asked, “What did you do?”

“What I should have done from the beginning,” the patrolman said, his voice turning faint. “Ozai has to be stopped. Pyre has been waging war on this city for decades and I— I see that now. I can’t— I can’t be a part of it.”

It was beyond anything Sokka had expected to hear, not from a man in that uniform, and Sokka was instantly suspicious of it. Because if Sokka was wrong, if this man was a plant, sniffing out members of the Avatar, then Sokka would be dead by sunrise. Hell, the patrolman could be wiretapped. This could be a setup. 

“Please excuse me while I try to process the nonsense that just came out of your mouth,” Sokka said, because that felt like a safe thing to say while he thought about snipers aimed at his forehead. 

The patrolman frowned, a serious dip between his brows. “How long’s that gonna take?”

Sokka snorted. “Oh, five to six business days.”

The patrolman pressed harder against his side with his hand, and in the dim light Sokka saw that the tips of his fingers were covered in red. The patrolman didn’t say anything besides softly scoffing at the ground. 

Despite himself, Sokka felt guilty. Indescribably, incurably, insurmountably guilty. He lowered himself down onto his knees in front of the patrolman, hands outstretched before him, and the patrolman gave him a confused, pain-glazed look, eyes peeking around the wild strands of his hair. Someone needed to get him a hair tie. No, Sokka, not the time to think about that. 

Sokka had to be careful about what he said. “Let me check your wound,” he said. That was something safe to say. The patrolman narrowed his eyes. ‘Trust me,’ Sokka mouthed, and he had no way of telling if the patrolman understood him, but Sokka had to move on regardless. Settling his hands gently on the man’s shoulders, Sokka said, “Can you sit up?”

“I’m not fucking five,” the patrolman ground out, but he slowly pulled his legs around until Sokka could help him lean his back against the lamppost. Now came the awkward part. Sokka wished that he could tell the patrolman not to freak out but that would sort of defeat the purpose of looking for a wiretap. 

Sokka started unbuttoning the patrolman’s coat. The patrolman froze up, his entire body turning into one tense muscle, his breathing rasping out at a faster rate. Underneath his coat he was wearing a loose black t-shirt, and as Sokka skimmed his hand up the patrolman’s chest, quick and businesslike, trying not to feel the firm lines of the patrolman’s abdomen and pecks, he did feel something wet coming from the side of his stomach that the patrolman was still pressing down on. The air was strong with the scent of iron. 

He didn’t feel any wires. He pushed the patrolman forward, perhaps rougher than he should have, and the patrolman’s nose planted into Sokka’s shoulder. Sokka reached under the patrolman’s jacket and felt along his back. Nothing. Sokka pushed the patrolman back against the lamppost. 

“What the fuck,” the patrolman hissed at him. 

“That’s a pretty bad wound,” Sokka said as he patted the patrolman’s jacket pockets, digging into them and coming out with just a lighter. Sokka put it back. He found an inside pocket on the jacket lapel, and pulled out a white box of cigarettes. _Lucky Star_ _._ Sokka checked the inside, and just like advertised— cigarettes. He put that back as well. 

“You robbing me?” the patrolman asked. 

“Do you have any money?” Sokka asked, and instantly, he winced. Damn his stupid mouth. “No, I’m not robbing you. I’m checking your wound.”

Sokka reached down and patted at the patrolman’s pants pockets and the patrolman managed to flinch, curling up one knee to his chest. “What the fuck are you doing, you fucking perv,” he rasped. 

Sokka felt his face heating up. He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Look, I don’t want to be doing this any more than you want me to be doing it.”

“Then why the fuck are you doing it?” the patrolman ground out.

Sokka pressed his lips together. He asked himself if a plant would be as seriously injured as the patrolman was. He supposed it depended on if the patrolman had the ability to fake an injury like this. 

Sokka sat back on his heels. 

“Done feeling me up?” the patrolman asked. 

If they had been under other circumstances, Sokka was sure he’d have a lot of responses to that particular type of query. As it was, Sokka just said, “I’ve got to ask. You wiretapped?”

The patrolman was silent, surveying him from beyond the veil of his hair, eyes bloodshot and sunken, like he hadn’t slept in a very long time. “I don’t have time for this.”

Sokka raised an eyebrow. “Well, if you’ve got somewhere to be, then,” he gestured out at the empty street, “by all means.”

The patrolman sullenly remained in place. “I’m not wiretapped,” the patrolman told him. 

“Promise?” Sokka asked, because he was a little shit sometimes. 

The patrolman grit his teeth and said, “I promise you.”

Sokka wiped his smirk off his face, because the patrolman’s response was oddly solemn, like he was promising more than he needed to, like he was promising something else altogether. 

“I live in that building there,” Sokka said, pointing at the building to the patrolman’s back. “Come inside and I’ll hide you from the patrol.”

The patrolman bowed his head, and Sokka realized that it was meant to be a small nod. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Sokka grumbled. “I live on the top floor.”

The patrolman’s brow pinched down over his one good eye. His pale, sickly, almost translucent face seemed to become impossibly paler, but all he said was, “Doesn’t matter.”

“Sure thing, tough guy,” Sokka said, gathering his feet underneath him and balancing in a crouch. “Wanna stand up for me?”

Sokka knew that it was going to make him sad to watch the patrolman try and fail to stand up again, so he didn’t wait for it to happen. He lifted the patrolman’s free arm and slung it over his shoulders. With his left hand he kept that arm in place, and with the other he tucked it under the patrolman’s right arm, the arm still stemming the blood from his wound. 

“On three,” Sokka said, “Three.” He stood up, pulling the patrolman along with him. The patrolman didn’t cry out, but he did let out a low growling sound at the back of his throat, like a cornered dog. Sokka felt the patrolman sag against his side, his full weight like a heavy sack of sand that Sokka was tasked to lug around. But they were standing. 

“You good?” Sokka asked. He couldn’t see the patrolman’s face anymore. It was lagging to the side of his periphery. 

“You didn’t count to three,” Sokka heard from very close to his ear. 

He smiled. “Never said I would. Listen, I need you to be honest with me. Can you walk?”

For a long moment, the patrolman was silent. Sokka looked out at the empty streets, scanning for any sign of a patrol’s torch. 

“Yes,” the patrolman said. 

They started walking toward the door. The patrolman hadn’t lied; while his pace was slow, it was steady. Sokka tried to take as much of his weight as he could, but the patrolman fought him on it, like the day he depended on anyone was the day he died. Well, Sokka thought darkly, that day might still be today. 

Sokka thought that the stairs were going to be another matter altogether, but the patrolman seemingly thrived on proving him wrong. It was only on the last flight that the patrolman wavered at all. Sokka felt the man’s sides heaving with his breaths. 

“I can carry you the rest,” Sokka said, without expecting much of an answer. The patrolman wasn’t quite as tall as Sokka was, but then again, few people were. That didn’t mean that the patrolman was even remotely a lightweight. 

“Shut up,” the patrolman panted, and Sokka didn’t try to carry him, except for the last few steps, where it felt more like Sokka was dragging a man instead of steadying him. 

“Just a little more,” Sokka said, fumbling for his keys, and then they were stumbling into his tiny one room apartment. Sokka didn’t bother to hit the light switch, just dragged the patrolman’s dead weight over to his bed, which was the only flat surface large enough to hold him that wasn’t the floor. Sokka guided him to sit down, then lifted the man’s mud-caked boots onto Sokka’s clean sheets (may his clean sheets rest in peace), and let his head loll on Sokka’s pillow. 

Sokka’s handiwork complete, he rested his hands on his hips, letting out a strained sigh. He walked back to his entryway and locked his door, turned on his lights, and took off his own boots. He hung his jacket on the hook behind the door, and then moved around the room to his window, pulling the blinds closed and covering them with heavy, light-blocking curtains. 

Then it was just Sokka and the strange, gravely injured man. He went into his bathroom and came out with the first-aid kit that Katara had given him for his birthday (because her presents always managed to express disapproval with his life choices and worry for his continuing existence), which looked a lot like a tackle box but bright red, and filled with bandages, ointments, a thermometer, non-prescription painkillers, and a small bottle of peroxide. 

He dragged his desk chair over to the side of his bed, and studied the patrolman, whose skin was waxy and lifeless, eyes half-lidded and contemplating the pocked ceiling. 

Well, it wasn’t like Sokka had planned to sleep anyway. 

“So,” Sokka began, leaning his elbows on his knees to keep the patrolman’s face on eye level. He paused, suddenly thrown for any word to possibly follow it up. 

The patrolman closed his eyes, letting out a puff of breath, hand clutching once more at his wounded side, and promptly turned limp, like he’d finally given up on life altogether. 

“No!” Sokka yelped, jumping out of his seat, hands reaching out to clutch at each of the patrolman’s shoulders. Should he shake him? Should he do CPR? Hell, where was Katara when you needed her. Shit, was he dead? Had he just died?

Sokka got enough of his mind to coalesce to check the patrolman’s pulse at his neck, which beat feebly but undeniably. He felt for the breath coming from the patrolman’s nose, and there it was. 

Sokka collapsed back into his seat and clutched at his own head. “I am so not cut out for this,” he said, dragging his hands down his face and feeling them land limply in his lap. “Shit, what would Katara do? Shit.”

Evidently, Sokka decided that Katara would treat the patrolman’s wound. And to do that, Sokka needed to see the wound. Clear, actionable actions. 

“I’m sorry about this,” Sokka told the patrolman’s slack face. “I promise you I’m not a pervert.” He started by pulling off the patrolman’s jacket. He manhandled the patrolman’s limp arms and slid it out from underneath him. Sokka spread it out in the better light of his room, and his blood ran cold. It was soaked with blood. There was a hole, a single, dime sized hole. 

Shit. The patrolman had been shot. That thought bounced through his mind for a moment. 

There wasn’t a second hole. 

The patrolman’s black t-shirt was caked onto his body. Should he cut it off? Was it actually forming some kind of bandage, and if he took it off now, the patrolman would bleed to death? Sokka looked at the blood straining his sheets. 

He took out his cell phone. 

“Dearest sister of mine who I love more than anything,” he began when Katara picked up on the fifth ring. “My lovely, wonderful, medically trained sister—”

“It’s 4 AM, Sokka,” Katara saw fit to inform him. 

Sokka glanced at his digital clock at the table next to his bed. “It’s actually 4:14,” he told her. 

It was dangerously quiet on the other line, so Sokka pushed forward. “I’ve got a bit of a hypothetical scenario for you.” He watched the patrolman’s chest faintly rise and fall. “Let’s say there was a person, and they happened to have a bullet in them. Hypothetically.”

“Sokka,” Katara said, in that specific, disappointed tone of voice. 

Sokka reached out and gently patted the blood-slick right side of the patrolman’s abdomen until he found the entry wound. “Let’s say this hypothetical person had been shot on the farthest right side of their stomach, right above the hip bone. From the front.”

“ _Sokka_ ,” Katara said again, but with more feeling. 

“Now, they don’t seem to be bleeding all that much. I don’t know if that’s because they’ve already bled over everything or this shirt’s kind of been working as a bandage.”

On the other line, Sokka heard some shuffling, like Katara had pulled herself out of bed. “If you’re asking me what to do, Sokka, call a fucking ambulance.”

Sokka realized that his hand was now covered in blood. “Let’s pretend that ambulances don’t exist in this scenario.”

Katara let out an aggravated huff. “I don’t like this scenario.”

“Yeah,” Sokka said, his voice oddly high-pitched. “Yeah, it’s a pretty bad one.”

“I’m coming over,” she told him, her voice low and intense. “Curfew ends in two hours. I’ll grab the earliest train. I can be there in two and a half hours.”

It was very close to being the most comforting thing that Katara could tell him. Except. “What should I do in the meantime? What if he— I mean, they—”

“You said it’s above the waist? Don’t lift his legs. Don’t give him anything to eat or drink. Use a towel or something and apply pressure to the wound.”

“Okay,” Sokka said. “Towel. Got it.”

Sokka set his phone down on the night stand and left for the bathroom again. He came back, folded the towel into a square and pressed it down over the patrolman’s hip. 

“Sokka?” Katara was saying from the other line. 

“Shit, sorry, I just grabbed the towel.”

“Use a lot of pressure. Some people use their whole body weight.”

Sokka pressed down harder on the towel. “Right.”

“I hate this,” Katara said, her voice nearly breaking. “I never hated this curfew as much as I do right now. Do you know how long he’s had the wound?”

“Shit,” Sokka said, putting the call on speaker and setting it down on the bed next to the patrolman. Now he could use both hands to press down on the wound. “Hours? Days? Impossible to tell.”

“Who is it? Is it someone we know?”

She was asking if this was a member of the Avatar.

Sokka bit his lip. “No,” he said. “Just a guy.”

“Just a guy who can’t go to the hospital?” she asked, and Sokka wished she’d let it drop, because he already knew he was doing something stupid. He didn’t need to hear someone confirm it. 

“He got in trouble with a patrol. They’re still looking for him. I think if I took him to a hospital, it’d be like calling them up and saying, here’s the guy you’re looking to murder! You know?”

“What kind of trouble is he in?”

“Shit, Katara, why don’t I just ask him for his life story.”

“That’s a valid question to ask!” she yelled. “What if he’s some kind of murderer?”

Thoughtlessly, Sokka’s eyes found the patrolman’s jacket where he’d thrown it on the floor. “If he’s a murderer, I think I can handle him.”

“I swear to La, if you die from this, I’m not going to your funeral.”

“You’re so supportive of my choices.”

“Someone has to be.”

Sokka needed her to start talking about anything other than the unconscious man he was trying to keep alive, so he asked, “How’s the BF?”

“BF?” she hedged. 

“Don’t act coy with me,” Sokka said. 

“You’re trying to distract me from the fact that you’ve got a fatally injured man in your apartment.”

“What,” Sokka said drolly, seeing a bit of red peeking through the white terrycloth of the towel, and shifting his weight to increase the pressure. “No. That was just a hypothetical.”

“You’re killing me. You’re killing your sister.”

“Hey,” Sokka said, shifting his weight on his feet again. Was he really going to stand for two and a half hours? “I’m just trying to live my best life out here.”

“And I’m just trying to make sure that you don’t die in the process.”

Sokka sighed. He’d gone and done it. He’d activated Mother-Mode. 

“Maybe you should go back to sleep,” he said tiredly. “I doubt you’ve gotten more than an hour.”

There was a muffled sound from the other line. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. I know you’re stretched to your limits.”

“This is about someone’s life,” she said. “It’s fine.”

Sokka frowned down at the patrolman. The man’s brow was furrowed, like even now, he was stuck in a bad dream. Sokka wished he knew his name. There was so much he didn’t know. How had he gotten that scar? How had he gotten shot? Why was he trying to do the right thing? What does it mean to do the right thing, anyways? Sokka had never been very sure about that, not in the same way that Katara and Aang were. 

“I’ll call you again if something happens,” Sokka said. “Get here as fast as you can.”

“Okay,” Katara said, her voice pinched. There wasn’t really much to say, after that. Sokka reached over the patrolman’s body and ended the call. 

His tiny apartment was suddenly very quiet. It was quiet enough that Sokka could hear his own breathing. “When this is over, you’re buying me a new bed,” he whispered to the patrolman.

Of course, the patrolman said nothing. His chest rose and fell with his own faint, labored breaths. 


	2. doctors & denouement

Katara arrived in a knee-length trenchcoat, hair still in the same braid from yesterday, lugging a cross-body bag which was slightly too full. She dumped the bag on the counter of Sokka’s small kitchenette. She didn’t say much while she washed her hands thoroughly in the sink. Afterwards, she grabbed her bag and pushed Sokka out of the way next to the bed. She felt the patrolman’s pulse. She tsked. 

“Good morning,” Sokka said. Sokka had hidden the patrolman’s jacket in the back of his closet. He didn’t want Katara to know about that part of it just yet. He knew how his sister could get. 

“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Katara greeted. 

Sokka collapsed onto his desk chair. “Good chat.”

“The bullet’s still in him?”

Sokka ran his hand through the hair that was falling out of his wolftail. “I didn’t touch it, if that’s what you mean.”

Katara’s gaze was intent on the bloody square of towel covering the patrolman’s injury. “The majority of bullets used by the patrol are made of lead,” she said. Sokka had no idea why she knew that. “If we leave it in, he’ll contract lead poisoning.”

Sokka felt the blood leave his face. “So that means—”

“I’ve brought the necessary supplies.” She dumped her bag on the edge of the bed near the patrolman’s thigh. “Let’s hope this doesn’t kill him.”

The next half hour would be forever imprinted in Sokka’s mind as the bloodiest, goriest, and most heart-wrenching thirty minutes of his life. He didn’t know how Katara managed to do that kind of stuff every day. Doctors were sick. 

She had finally placed the busted-looking bullet onto a paper towel, and it laid on Sokka’s nightstand right next to his digital clock like any old ordinary loose change. 7:23 AM. Katara had used five stitches to close the bullet wound, and now the patrolman’s naked torso was laid thick with white bandages. Through everything, he’d never stirred, not even once. Sokka wondered if he should be worried. 

Katara collapsed onto Sokka’s lumpy tan armchair like her body had melted to it. Sokka remained in his desk chair, slouching forward, resting his head in his (newly washed) hands. 

It took them a few minutes, but eventually Sokka stood up and went to the kitchenette, where he began to make coffee. He walked back over to his sister and gave Katara her special cup, the same mug that she always used when she stayed at Sokka’s apartment. It was bright blue, covered with dolphins and the words: THE OCEAN MADE ME SALTY.

Two sugars, no milk. Katara’s special drug. She wrapped both her hands around the mug, as if to warm them. 

Sokka made his own cup of coffee, nothing special, just milk and sugar, in a mug he’d gotten free from an engineering convention, and when he sat down again, he started to feel like a real person. 

“He’s still lost a lot of blood,” Katara told him. 

Sokka blew on the steam rising from his mug. “Then let’s give him more.”

“You’re offering?” Katara smirked. 

Sokka blinked. He hadn’t quite put together the logical progression of his own words, but he agreed, nonetheless. “Sure.”

“Well, nice try. You’re AB. Not a universal donor. And that’s beside the point. We don’t have the right equipment.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sokka said, holding out a hand. “How do you know about my blood? I don’t even know about my blood.”

Katara smiled enigmatically at him. 

Sokka leaned his head back and groaned. “Stop being creepy.”

“I’m _not_ being creepy,” she huffed, sitting up straight. She took a prim-looking sip of her coffee. 

Sokka rolled his eyes. 

Katara only stayed long enough to finish her drink. If she left now, she told Sokka, she still had enough time to catch her first shift at the hospital. Sokka couldn’t believe she was still going to go to work, after all that had happened that morning.

“And you’re not?” she asked, pulling on her trenchcoat at the door. 

“Shit,” Sokka said, his eyes going wide as it just hit him, at that moment, that he had a job, a job that he went to every day for the past two years of his life. “The lab.” He reached up and massaged one of his aching temples. “Fuck the lab.”

“Fuck the lab,” Katara agreed, which wasn’t like her at all, to tell Sokka to skip out on work. Until she explained, “The guy,” she pointed at the still-unconscious patrolman, “is going to need someone to carry him to the bathroom when he wakes up.” As Sokka tried to process that comment, Katara looked back at him right before she closed the door behind her. She said, as innocent as could be, “You know, if he wasn’t half-dead, he’d be kinda hot.” 

The door slammed closed, leaving Sokka gaping at white wooden panels. Katara had waited for the perfect moment to get back at him for that boyfriend comment, that little shit. 

* * *

He called in sick to work. His old boss, Ji ‘the Mechanist’, could deal with one less assistant on staff for a couple days. He found himself wandering around his apartment, moving from his queen bed, where the patrolman laid prone and silent, sheets covered in mud and blood, and over to his kitchenette, and then to his armchair, where he clicked on the TV, turning on the news. The newslady was talking about a prize dog. Apparently, it had been trained to read the character for stop. 

Turning on the news was a bad habit of his. It made him angry. People were disappearing every day, vanishing from their apartments like ghosts. The curfew kept getting earlier and earlier. The tolls kept getting higher and higher. There’s a war going on. Everyone _knew_ there was a war going on. Sokka’s father was out there right now, at the frontlines, fighting in it, dammit. 

The newslady praised the dog. 

He had to turn off the news. 

In the sudden silence, Sokka heard his bed creak. He spun around in the chair, and watched as the patrolman blinked hazily at the ceiling, one arm braced against the bed like he meant to force himself up. 

“Don’t get up!” Sokka barked, jumping to his feet. 

The patrolman flinched, his arm shifting away from the bed. 

Sokka let out a sigh of relief, settling himself back into the desk chair at the patrolman’s side. “You’re not supposed to move.”

The patrolman blinked at him. When he spoke, his voice was even raspier than it had been when Sokka had found him all those hours ago. “Where am I?”

“My apartment, remember?” Sokka said. “Found you half-dead on the street. Dragged you up four flights of stairs. Kind of hard to forget.”

The patrolman blinked again. “I thought I was dreaming.”

Sokka nodded sympathetically. “You’ll adjust to my dazzling beauty soon enough.”

The patrolman looked like he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t figure out what. He looked down at the bandages wrapped around his waist. “Did you do this?”

“You better hope I didn’t,” Sokka snorted. “Brought in some professional help. Off the books. Otherwise you’d probably be a pincushion.”

“Oh,” the patrolman said quietly. 

“She left, though,” Sokka said.

“Oh,” the patrolman said again, staring blankly across at the polar leopard pelt next to Sokka’s bookcase.

Sokka snapped his fingers in front of the patrolman’s confused and tired face, trying to get him to meet Sokka’s own confused and tired eyes. “Hey, stay with me. I just spent I don’t know how many hours saving your life, I want to at least know your fucking name.”

The patrolman turned his head, his eyes two glimmering shards of gold. “Zuko,” he said. 

“Well, hey,” Sokka said, smiling a crooked smile. “I’m Sokka.”

The newly dubbed Zuko scrunched up his brow like he didn’t know what to do with that information. “Uh. Hello.”

Hello? What was Sokka supposed to do with ‘Hello’? The only thing that came to mind was Katara’s warning. “Do you need to piss?” he asked. 

Zuko’s face grew alarmed. 

Sokka’s face grew hot. “Ah!” he exclaimed, gesturing wildly. “I mean, my sister’s a doctor, you know and uh, she said that you’d have to— erm. Like. Do it. But you shouldn’t be like—” Sokka was very quickly losing steam, and he ended on a quiet note, “—moving.”

Zuko still looked very alarmed. 

Sokka gathered his strength. “Okay,” he started, clapping his hands together. “I get it. I do. You’re on the run from the law. You just had a bullet taken out of you. Times are tough. Times are confusing. But my doctor sister said that if you try to walk on your own, you’re going to blow your stitches. So we’re just gonna have to put up with this. Man to man. How’s that sound?”

Zuko gave a very alarmed nod. 

Sokka smile was very forced. “Great,” he said from between clenched teeth. 

In the resulting awkward silence, Sokka looked down at the wood flooring. He massaged his fist with his other hand. He had wanted the patrolman to wake up so badly, but now that he had, now that Zuko was finally awake, there were so many questions that he didn’t even know where to begin. And Sokka had gone and asked him if he needed to piss. Why the hell did he have to say that? Hell, he probably just blew everything, now Zuko thought he was some kind of fetishist— 

“I’m sorry,” Zuko said. 

Sokka lifted his head. 

Zuko stared straight into the middle distance, so that all Sokka could see was the unmarred side of his face, the side with the dark brows and long lashes. “I’ll leave as soon as I’m able,” Zuko said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sokka said instantly. “I’m not the kind of person to leave people to get picked off by a group of overinflated gun-toting shitbags.” He winced. “I mean—”

“No.” Zuko shook his head as much as he was able to. “I’m not a part of that anymore. You can insult them as much as you like.”

Sokka raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure you’re ready for me to insult something as much as I’d like.”

When Zuko raised his eyebrow, it looked like a challenge. 

“I write poetry, you know,” Sokka sniffed. 

Zuko blinked at him again. “Congrats?”

Clearly, he wasn’t getting it. “Po-et-ry,” Sokka enunciated. “If I wanted to insult someone—”

“You’d do in rhyme?” Zuko offered. 

“Ah,” Sokka said, like he’d had an epiphany. “I get it now. You’re an asshole.”

Zuko snorted, turning his head away. 

Well, that conversation hadn’t exactly gone as well as Sokka had hoped it would. He thought about going into the kitchen to turn the rice cooker on, maybe throw some type of breakfast together. He wasn’t sure he was even hungry. Sleep deprivation did that to him. 

He figured the hell with it. Maybe Zuko was hungry. He pushed himself to his feet. When he reached his fridge, he thought: _Shit, I just ran away, didn’t I?_

He walked back over to Zuko with a glass of water. That was a thing you gave to people with blood loss, right? He set it down on the nightstand next to the bloodied bullet. Sokka cringed. He should really do something about that. When he looked over at Zuko, he noticed that the other man was watching him like Sokka was a wild animal about to maul him for making a wrong move. 

Sokka rubbed the back of his neck, building up his nerves, and finally said, “Let me help you sit up.” 

“Why?” Zuko asked.

That wasn’t really the type of response you’d normally get after offering to pull an infirm man into a sitting position. “You know,” Sokka said lamely. “So you won’t choke.” After a moment, he tagged on, “On the water.”

“You brought me water,” Zuko said, eyeing the glass like it was poisoned. 

There was something about how _difficult_ Zuko was being in a situation where any other person would probably sob at an offered glass of water that made Sokka dig in his heels like Toph wrestling someone into the ground. 

“I’m also going to make you breakfast,” Sokka said vindictively. “And I’m going to carry you to the bathroom, and my sister’s probably going to steal you some oxycontin, because she secretly loves committing federal crimes. Now hold still.” 

Zuko did hold still, and whether that was because he’d been stunned into silence, or he really had no energy to resist, Sokka couldn’t tell. Sokka dragged over his other pillow, set it against the wall, and reached under Zuko’s arms and tugged him up. It was halfway through this single minded action that Sokka realized that Zuko still wasn’t wearing a shirt, and he smelled like three day old sweat and blood. 

When Zuko’s head lolled against the wall, Sokka grabbed his hand and slid the glass of water into it. For a second, Sokka’s hand pressed over Zuko’s limp and trembling one, Sokka wasn’t sure whether he’d take it, but Zuko did, and Sokka took his own hand away. 

“Your sister loves crimes,” Zuko repeated faintly. 

“Drink your water,” Sokka said, resting his hands on his hips. 

Zuko sighed and took a tentative sip of his water. 

“Huh,” Sokka said, looking at Zuko’s bandages. “I half-expected it to come leaking out of your bullet wound like a jug with a hole in it.”

Zuko started coughing. 

“Shit, don’t die,” Sokka said, snagging the glass away from him and setting it back on the nightstand.

“Why the fuck—” Zuko wheezed, “—would you expect that?”

“I saw a cartoon one time.”

“Are you an idiot?”

“Now that’s a rude thing to say to the person who’s going to carry you to the toilet.”

When Zuko turned his scowl into a disgruntled frown, Sokka registered that he knew next to nothing about the man he’d invited into his apartment, this man who looked like everything Sokka stood against. 

Objectively, Zuko was a very scary-looking individual, with his horrible burn scar, and especially when he scowled, his brows pinched in an angry furrow. He looked like he was the scariest member of the night patrol, the one who kicked out people’s knees and pressed his rifle to people’s foreheads.

“I’m sorry,” Zuko said solemnly. “I didn’t mean that.”

His tone struck Sokka for a moment. It was just so oddly sincere, like he was genuinely worried that he had hurt Sokka’s feelings. 

Zuko’s hand weakly clenched at Sokka’s bedsheets. His face was turned away. “I’m trying to be a good person,” he said. “It’s not something that’s— easy, for me.”

Sokka shook himself. “It’s going to take a lot more than that to insult me, buddy boy. I was a theatre kid.”

That, at least, got Zuko to turn back and face him. “A theatre kid?”

“I know,” Sokka said, fanning himself, “One as handsome and buff as I couldn’t ever possibly be into the theatrical arts—”

“I was, too,” Zuko said, and Sokka felt like the bottom of his stomach just opened up.

“Like hell you were,” Sokka yelled. 

The corner of Zuko’s mouth twitched in the hint of a smile. “Don’t get me wrong. I was bad at it.”

“Now don’t sell yourself short,” Sokka said, waggling his finger. “Got any monologues memorized?”

Zuko furrowed his brow. “I don’t like where this is headed.”

“C’mon, Zuko,” Sokka drew out. “If I don’t get to judge your half-assed acting skills in person then what’s even the _point?”_

“I’m, uh—” Zuko stuttered, “There’s a point?”

“You’re hopeless!” Sokka exclaimed to the ceiling, and Zuko flinched minutely back against the wall. 

“Uh, sorry,” Zuko said quietly, eyes trained on the bookcase. 

Sokka felt himself clack his mouth shut. He really needed to rein himself in. He couldn’t go around treating Zuko like he was his friend when he barely knew the guy. 

“Drink more water,” Sokka said, subdued, and stood up and walked back to the kitchen. In silence, he threw together some natto, the only sound the distant thumping of a person in his neighboring apartment as they dropped something or other. Normally, he wasn’t a big fan of silence, and usually he had the TV or the radio on for some background noise, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn anything on with Zuko here. Maybe Zuko liked silence, like some kinda weirdo. 

When he walked back to the bed with Zuko’s bowl, the other man looked to be halfway asleep, eyes heavy. 

Sokka cleared his throat to get his attention, but it didn’t seem to work. 

He snapped his fingers in front of his face again. “Wake up!”

Zuko flinched again, bumping his head back against the wall and wincing. 

“Shit,” Sokka said, quickly pulling his hand behind his back, like removing the offending appendage would fix the situation. “Shit, did I just give you brain damage?”

“Uh,” Zuko said. 

Sokka put the bowl down the nightstand and sank his fingers into Zuko’s hair, trying to feel the back of his head, checking for blood. He idly thought that the guy’s hair was very greasy, and, in some places, caked in dried blood, despite the fact that his injury was nowhere near his head. 

It took him a second, but Zuko tugged his head away from Sokka’s hand. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Sokka determinately followed Zuko’s head. “I’m checking your head.”

Zuko shook his head from side to side, like Sokka’s hand was a large bug he was trying to dislodge. “Get off of me.”

“Stop being a baby.”

“What am I— your _pet?_ ” Zuko hissed. 

“This is a sex positive household, Zuko,” Sokka smirked. “No kinkshaming.”

Zuko’s head froze in place. 

Sokka removed his hand like it had been burnt. “But I’m not a pervert!” he squeaked. “And your head’s probably fine,” he tacked on, perhaps too quickly. “Unless you start seeing double. Or get a headache or black out or start spasming. Or something. I’m not a doctor.”

Zuko let out a quiet sigh. 

“Bet you’re wishing some other asshole found you bleeding out in the street, huh?” Sokka said, suddenly unable to look at Zuko at all. “Take your chopsticks and eat your breakfast.”

Silently, Zuko did take his chopsticks. Sokka handed him his bowl, and Zuko said, “I’m not.”

“Not what?”

He frowned down at his natto and didn’t answer, and Sokka retreated back to his kitchen to eat his own breakfast. 

A while later, Sokka decided that he couldn’t keep staring at the bottom of his empty bowl and clattered it into the sink to deal with later. If he had been wearing sleeves, he might have pushed them up. Instead, he clapped his fist into his other hand. “Okay,” he whispered to himself, bouncing on his heels. “Okay, I can do this.”

Zuko had placed his own empty bowl neatly on the nightstand. When Sokka came into view, he rasped, “Where’s my jacket?”

“Oh, I had to hide it,” he explained. “Didn’t want my sister knowing you were a patrolman.”

“I’m not anymore.”

“Tell that to your patrol jacket.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?” Sokka asked, sliding back into his desk chair next to his bed with a thump. “Because, at this point, I’m not sure I know anything.”

Zuko bit his lip, studying his bandages. “I’ll explain everything. I promise you. I’m just— tired right now.”

He did look very tired. The bags under his eyes hadn’t abated in the slightest. If anything, they had grown worse. 

Sokka nodded. “Let me take you to the bathroom, and then you can get some rest. We’ll talk more when you wake up, all right? I’ll get you your jacket.”

“Thank you, Sokka,” Zuko told him, again in that tone of voice which was oddly sincere, like he meant it more than he could ever express. 

An odd smile took over Sokka’s face, half-confused, half-amused. “Sure thing, buddy.”


	3. leaders & limerence

Sokka was passed out in his armchair when his doorbell rang. It must have been rung a lot of times to have woken him up, because when he lifted his delirious head, it rang again, insistently, like a bird at his window. 

“Go away,” he moaned to the room in general. 

The doorbell rang again. 

“I said go away!” he moaned again. 

This time, whoever rang the doorbell pressed down on it for five straight seconds. 

“Okay, I’m up!” Sokka yelled, and he rolled himself to unsteady feet. His mind coalesced enough to remind him that there was an injured patrolman on his bed, for whatever reason, but Zuko didn’t seem to be awake. Small miracles.

Sokka pressed down on the intercom. “What the fuck do you want.”

A voice sing-songed back at him, chirpy like it was normal to be awake at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Which it was. “So-o-okka~!”

“Aang,” Sokka said, surprised. “What are you doing out in public?”

“Let me in~!”

Sokka pressed harder down on the intercom button. “Are you at _least_ wearing a hat?”

“Sokka!” Aang whined. 

“Okay,” Sokka sighed. “I’m letting you in.” 

He took a moment to once again throw on his coat, grab his keys, and put on some slippers. He spared a glance for Zuko, who looked, for lack of a better word, dead to the world. He made sure to lock the door behind him. 

Aang sat on the stoop in front of his apartment in an orange bomber jacket and a brown aviator hat with goggles, his orange scooter parked haphazardly between two sedans in a move that was definitely illegal. When Sokka opened the door, he sprung to his feet, the flaps of his hat bouncing with the movement. 

“Sokka!” he exclaimed. “Great to see you! How are you? You feeling okay? Katara told me you called out sick today so I came to check up on you, let’s go in!” Aang brushed past him through the door, skipping his way through the hallway.

Sokka gave a sleepy glance at the street, checking to see if anyone was watching them, before shutting the door. 

Neither of them said much as they climbed the stairs. But as Sokka fumbled for his keys, he did remember to say, “So don’t freak out.”

“What?” Aang said. 

Sokka pushed open the door, and quickly pushed Aang inside, shutting the door behind them. Aang curiously looked around the apartment until he found Zuko lying on Sokka’s bed, then he grew very still, which was odd for Aang. 

Then Aang rolled up his sleeve, exposing the tonfa he kept hidden there, which was exactly what Aang did when he was about to fight someone. 

“Hey, Sokka,” Aang said. “There’s a guy in your bed.”

“Uh, yeah,” Sokka said, scratching the back of his head. 

“ _Sokka_ ,” Aang said, voice uncharacteristically serious, raising his arm as if Zuko would suddenly rise from the bed and spring at them. “Why do you have _that guy_ in your bed?”

Sokka quickly looked from Aang to Zuko, a thread of panic making his heart begin to pick up. “What do you mean?”

“That,” Aang jutted with his tonfa. “That’s the _X-Soldier_. You’ve got the flipping X-Soldier in your mother-flipping _bed_!”

There were few figures within Pyre’s regiment at Ba Sing Se that were as infamous, especially to members of the Avatar, as the X-Soldier, the helmeted leader of the squadron designed to root out members of the Avatar and capture them. The X-Soldier was known for being absolutely ruthless, a paragon of Pyre’s brutality, a wolf that never lost the scent of its prey. 

But no one had ever seen his face. 

“Aang, how do you know what he looks like!?” Sokka spluttered. 

“That’s not the important part here!” Aang hedged, studiously not looking at him. “The question is,” Aang enunciated each word by stabbing his hand at Zuko, _“Why - is - he - here?”_

 _“_ I—” Sokka began, feeling a sense of dawning dread come over him. “I found him on the street outside. He’d been shot.”

Aang immediately started pacing, a quick three steps one direction, three steps back. “What did he say to you to get you to let him inside?”

Sokka thought about the fact that he’d brought his sister to come fix up the X-Soldier. Oh dear La— his sister had been in the same room as him! What had he been thinking? “He said,” Sokka mumbled, “He said that he would die if the night patrol found him like that.”

Aang stopped in place. His back was to Sokka as he contemplated the sleeping figure on the bed. “He said that?”

“He keeps on saying that he’s not a part of the patrol anymore. Shit,” Sokka said, running a hand over his forehead and scrunching up his eyes. “It’s all a lie, isn’t it? I’m such a fucking idiot.”

It shouldn’t have hurt so much, learning that Zuko wasn’t actually some run of the mill patrolman that pissed off the wrong person. He was actually Enemy Number One, a man who’d Sokka himself had exchanged blows with, a person who Aang had been captured by time and time again. _Of course_ Zuko had been lying. Zuko must have targeted him specifically. He must have somehow divined that Sokka had a stupid bleeding heart and now he was using it to root out Aang, to burn down the only resistance left against Pyre in Ba Sing Se. 

“What did he say specifically?” Aang asked, turning around to face Sokka.

Sokka slid his hand off his face. “What’s it matter? I’ve been played like a damn lute. I have half a mind to just dump him out the window.”

“Sokka,” Aang said lowly. “We’re _not_ going to dump him out the window.”

“I didn’t say I was gonna _do_ it,” Sokka grumbled. “Just thinking about it.”

“No, I mean,” Aang brought his fist up to his chin. He hummed to himself, but never finished what he was going to say. Sokka watched him walk over to the desk chair Sokka still had next to the bed. Aang sat down in it, staring intently at Zuko’s sleeping face. Sokka still stood uncertainly in the doorway, but this prompted him to follow Aang to the bedside, where the both of them considered Zuko in silence. 

“This is kinda creepy,” Aang eventually announced, abruptly turning in his chair to look at Sokka instead. “What else did he say to you?”

Sokka shrugged. “He said some stuff about doing the right thing. He—” Sokka didn’t really want to share the fact that Zuko had been a theatre kid, for some reason, “He wants to stop Ozai.”

Aang hummed again. 

“Listen, are you _sure_ this is the X-Soldier?” Sokka asked. “Like really really sure? Because he’s kinda young, and I always imagined the X-Soldier to be some gross old guy.”

“No, I’m sure,” Aang said. He bit his lip, nervously hunching down over his lap, elbows on his knees. “I guess I should probably explain.”

“Yeah,” Sokka huffed. “You think?”

With a dramatic sigh, Aang straightened in his chair. “There’s not much to say. I ran a mission by myself once— got myself caught.” Sokka gave him a disapproving look worthy of Katara. Aang waved his hand, as if dismissing it. “But not by the X-Soldier, see. It was another guy, some up and coming captain. Brought me into the Palace, threw me into the brig. You know, the whole shebang.”

“Yeah,” Sokka snorted sarcastically. “Just your everyday stuff.”

“The thing is,” Aang stressed, “I was _saved._ Not by anyone in the Avatar. But by _him.”_ Aang pointed at Zuko’s sleeping face. “I don’t know why. He wouldn’t say anything. And I’m not sure what he would have done if we hadn’t been separated in the Upper Ring— if he would have attacked me, tried to bring me in himself. I don’t know.” Aang shook his head. 

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Sokka asked. “Aang, this is—”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Aang slumped back in the chair. “But I couldn’t tell anyone. We all hated him. He made our lives a living hell— I couldn’t walk in to a meeting and say that— well.” He ducked his head. “I’m still not sure what to think.”

Now it was Sokka’s turn to pace. He crossed his arms as he tried to digest what Aang was saying, or not saying, as was more likely. He eventually stopped in place. “You were protecting him,” Sokka said. 

Aang hunched his shoulders. “Maybe.”

The only thing Sokka could splutter was, “Why?”

Aang looked up to meet his eyes. “Why did you bring him inside?”

With a huff that was half-growl, Sokka collapsed back into his armchair. He picked up the TV remote, but didn’t otherwise do anything with it. “I guess you’re staying until he wakes up?”

Aang swung back to his feet and wandered over to Sokka’s fridge. “Got any snacks?”

“Guess that’s a yes,” Sokka sighed. 

* * *

Late evening, while Sokka and Aang boredly half-watched a soccer game re-run, Zuko finally woke up. They realized he had woken up because he had forced himself to tumble off the far side of the bed, and at the thump of his body slamming into the floor, Sokka and Aang jumped in their seats.

Sokka quickly rushed to his feet, finding the place where Zuko had been laying for the past day empty. He walked around the side of the bed to see him planted on the floor, breathing fast through a clenched jaw, hands placed on the floor as if he was about to do a push-up. 

“What the hell are you doing!” Sokka yelled, kneeling at his side, reaching for his shoulders. “You could’ve just blown all of your stitches, asshole!”

Zuko only responded with a wheeze.

Sokka helped him roll onto his back, and, sure enough, there was a new stain of blood leaking through his bandages. 

“Do you see this!” Sokka pointed at the bandages. “Look at what you’ve done!”

“S-sorry,” Zuko hissed out. 

“See if I help you again,” Sokka sniffed, already slinging an arm around Zuko’s back and under his knees. Sokka soon hefted the man off the ground, Zuko’s head lolling drunkenly against his shoulder. With little ceremony, Sokka dropped him back on the bed, and Zuko let out a pained hiss, clutching at his side. 

“Well,” Aang chirped. “I think he’s probably not faking the injury.”

Sokka massaged his temple. “Yeah. I think we got that part.”

“Why is the leader of the Avatar here?” Zuko asked, and it was clear that he was trying to make his voice sound strong, but it didn’t really work, as it came out rasping and faint. 

“The better question,” Aang said imperiously, hands on his hips, “is why _you’re_ here, Soldier.”

Zuko briefly blinked his eyes shut, a grimace gripping his face. When he opened them again, he turned his head to speak only to Sokka. “Did you bring him here to turn me in?”

Sokka raised an eyebrow. “Nobody brings Aang anywhere. And, for the record, he’s here because he’s my best friend. And, for the double record, if I wanted to turn you in to the Avatar, I’d do it myself, considering, I am, you know, a _member_ of the Avatar.”

Zuko blinked at him. “You are?” he asked, utterly bewildered. 

“Yes!” Sokka snapped, stamping his foot. “I have literally fought you before! Face to face! You know who I am!” 

“I do?” Zuko asked. 

“Aang,” Sokka said, “I can’t fucking believe this guy. Lying to our faces!”

“For shame,” Aang said, shaking his head. 

“I’m sorry,” Zuko said wearily. “I’ve fought a lot of people. It just gets mixed up sometimes— uh, do you remember when it was?”

Explaining to Zuko in detail the brief and horribly lopsided encounters they’d had in the past sounded like an exquisite form of torture to Sokka, and Sokka was not convinced that Zuko was the type to resort to psychological torture of that caliber. By that logic, Zuko was telling the truth, and he really _hadn’t_ remembered Sokka, and that meant that Sokka hadn’t been targeted at all, and that meant that it was pure chance that had led Sokka to finding his fallen form in the street, and that meant— 

“Why didn’t you tell me you were the X-Soldier?” Sokka asked. 

With a sour look, Zuko said, “I’m not anymore. I quit. I’m done with helping Ozai turn the world into a battlefield.”

“You call him Ozai,” Aang said, “That’s interesting.”

Reluctantly, it seemed, Zuko turned to Aang. Now that Sokka thought about it, it was indeed a little odd that Zuko called the President of Pyre by his name. 

“Sokka told me your name is Zuko,” Aang continued, arching his brow in a mischievous challenge. “What happened to you, Zuko?”

Zuko licked his lips. “I’m not going to try to capture you anymore. I’m done with that.”

Aang flashed a quick smile. “That’s good to hear.”

Nervously, Zuko shifted his gaze up to the ceiling. “As for what happened to me, I...” he trailed off. “I realized that the thing I wanted I was never going to get.” He pressed his lips into a line and did not elaborate.

Sokka scratched at his head and exchanged a look with Aang. 

“And the gunshot?” Sokka prompted. 

“Oh that’s…” Again, Zuko trailed off. “A parting gift.”

Sokka couldn’t think of anything to follow that up with, and apparently, neither could Aang. They exchanged another look, standing together in silence. 

“I guess you don’t have any reason to trust me,” Zuko eventually picked up. 

Sokka snorted. “You could say that.”

Zuko’s hands clenched the sheets he was laying on. “I could prove it to you.” He pressed down against the bed and tried to make himself sit upright, and Sokka was about to yell at him to stop trying to make his wound worse when he evidently came to that conclusion on his own. Good for him. 

The effort left Zuko panting, but his eyes were glazed with an inner fire. “Let me join you and I’ll help you take down the Pyrian Empire.”

Aang once again broke out into a smile. He tapped his chin as if in deep thought. “Hm, I’ll have to think about it. You _did_ cause us a lot of trouble.” Aang took a couple wandering steps to Zuko’s bedside. “But I always thought you were very honorable, for an enemy.” Aang reached out and patted Zuko’s hair once.

Zuko scrunched up his nose in confusion, and Aang laughed. 

To Sokka, it looked a lot like Aang had made up his mind already, and he couldn’t say he was very surprised. Sokka, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure. But Zuko wasn’t faking his injury, and Sokka couldn’t imagine the other man agreeing to a plan of subterfuge so complicated that it would require shooting himself in the side, and then ingratiating himself with a random bleeding heart member of the Avatar who— Sokka dare not forget, _he doesn’t remember fighting._

Because Sokka was having a particularly bad day, his doorbell rang again. Everyone in the room grew tense and still. Zuko furrowed his brow. Aang frowned. 

Sokka walked over to the intercom. “Yeah?” he said into it. 

“I’m here to check on the guy,” Katara said. “You didn’t make him worse, did you?”

“Oh fuck,” Sokka said, relieved enough to slump against wall. “It’s just you.”

“Of course it’s just me,” she huffed. “Is Aang up there? I saw where he parked. He’s gonna be towed, you know.”

“Nah,” Sokka smirked. “His luck’s too good.” 

Sokka watched Aang flash him a victory sign in the corner of his eye. 

“I’ll head down in a second,” Sokka said, and took his hand off the button. “Both of you behave.” Sokka gave both Zuko and Aang a stern look. “Zuko, that was my sister. She’s here to check on you, and she’s probably going to kill you for ripping open your stitches, so conduct your last rights.”

Zuko’s face blanched, and Sokka snickered to himself as he grabbed his keys. 

Katara looked run-down and haggard, more hair falling out of her braid than staying in it, which was exactly how Sokka was feeling. She held up a plastic bag with a cute pictograph of a take-out box, and Sokka said, “I think you’re the sole thing in the world keeping me alive.”

She snorted. “I’m aware.”

During the walk up, Sokka tried to think of the right way to tell her that the Guy, as Katara had taken to calling him, was actually the Avatar’s most sworn enemy, and that this sworn enemy was actually now on their side, sort of, kinda. But of course he couldn’t find any words at all, and by the time they arrived at his door, all Sokka could manage was, “The guy’s awake. Zuko’s his name.”

“Guess we can finally get some answers,” Katara said. 

Sokka made a noncommittal noise. 

Inside the apartment, Aang was sitting cross-legged on the bed to Zuko’s left, talking animatedly with waving hands. Zuko seemed to be listening out of politeness. 

“Katara!” Aang exclaimed upon seeing her, leaping off the bed in one bound. “Is that _take-out?!”_

Katara beamed at him. “How did I guess that you’d be here?”

“Supernatural precognition?” 

“Yeah, probably,” Katara said, shuffling off along with Aang to place her bag down in the kitchen. 

Sokka went to check on Zuko, still lying prone on his back, the blood steadily darkening his white bandages. He looked apprehensive, to say the least. 

“She’s not actually going to kill you,” Sokka told him in a whisper, cupping his mouth. 

By the way that Zuko’s eyes nervously flickered to him and away, Sokka realized that he wasn’t sure Zuko believed him. “She’s not,” Sokka said more firmly. 

“Okay,” Zuko rasped. 

Katara emerged back into the room, this time equipped with blue rubber gloves that she must have taken from the hospital. Sokka shifted out of the way, letting Katara take up the space at Zuko’s bedside. 

Katara took one look at Zuko’s bandages and said, “Sokka. I told you not to let him move.”

Gesturing wildly, Sokka tried to defend himself, “I don’t control him!”

“I’m sorry,” Zuko told her evenly. “I woke up disoriented and fell off the bed.”

Katara tutted. “Well, try not to do that again, okay? With an injury this bad, if anything goes wrong I won’t be able to help you. You’ll need an actual hospital.”

“I understand.”

“I’m sure you’re in a lot of pain, too. I got you some painkillers. Aang, go grab them from my bag!”

“On it!” Aang called. 

“Sokka, go wet some paper towels. We’ll have to clean the wound again.”

“Gotcha,” Sokka said. 

Things took on a very business-like tone after that. Painkillers— they weren’t oxy, but they were still fairly illegal— were shoved into Zuko’s hands, along with a glass of water. His bandages were cut open, where they saw all five of his stitches had been broken. It made Katara upset in the sad kind of way, where she didn’t yell at anyone except herself. She stitched him up again, this time with six. Zuko didn’t say much at all. 

Afterward, Sokka, Katara and Aang stood around in the kitchen eating noodles out of boxes under fluorescent lights. 

“There’s something the two of you aren’t telling me,” Katara said, gesturing at them suspiciously with her chopsticks. 

Sokka exchanged a guilty look with Aang. Aang nodded in his head in a gesture that meant, ‘You do it.’

Sokka took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “You’ve probably guessed by now that Zuko isn’t just some guy.”

They told her everything. 

Afterward, Katara leaned against the wall to look at Zuko’s passed out form on the bed, where he breathed evenly in and out, his newly bandaged chest rising and falling. 

“You still have his jacket?” Katara asked, tone unreadable. 

Sokka went to dig it out of the back of his closet. Somehow, it looked even more mud-stained than it had been before, smelling sharply of day-old blood. Katara took it from him and flicked the fire insignia. 

“That’s who he was all along,” she said. 

“He says he’s changed,” Aang offered. “Who’s to say that he hasn’t?”

Katara twisted her mouth. “I don’t like him staying here with you, Sokka.”

“He’s harmless,” Sokka said. “He can barely lift his head. I don’t think he’s going to be much of a danger. And besides— if he doesn’t stay here, where’s he gonna go? If we throw him out on the street, that’s a death sentence.”

“But I’m worried about you,” Katara sighed. “Come stay at my apartment tonight.”

“What— and leave the guy who can’t move to his own devices?”

“That guy,” Katara hissed, “is responsible for hunting us down!”

“I get it!” Sokka hissed back. “I wasn’t exactly expecting this kind of baggage, you know! But I started this damn thing, and I’m going to see it to the end!”

Katara blinked rapidly, as if holding back tears. “You better not be doing this because he’s hot.”

“Katara,” Sokka growled. 

“All right!” she said, holding up her hands in surrender. “You can have your stupid X-Soldier! But don’t act like I don’t care, because I _do._ I’m the one who’s saved him so far, and I like to make sure that my patients stay that way. So I expect regular updates. You hear me?”

Sokka let out a relieved smile. “I hear you.”

“For better or for worse,” Katara said, meeting Sokka and then Aang’s eyes, “We’re seeing this through. Let’s hope no one gets hurt in the process.”


	4. baths & balter

In the morning, Sokka groggily woke up in his saggy armchair, his neck cramping, back aching, surly enough to consider rolling Zuko off his bed and onto the floor, his new stitches be damned. But he did none of that. Zuko laid like a porcelain statue, arms lying flat at his sides. He’d hardly moved all night. His blood-encrusted patrolman jacket hung on the back of Sokka’s desk chair. 

Sokka stumbled through his morning routine, nearly tripping as he tugged on a new pair of jeans, stubbing his toe on his desk, and jumping around like a madman as he held in the curses he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. When he finally got himself under control, he called the Mechanist. 

“Hey, boss,” Sokka sniffed. 

Ji’s voice came through tinny and half-distracted, like his attention was mostly on something else. “You sound horrible, young man!”

“Thanks, boss,” Sokka sniffed. 

“I take it this means you won’t be coming in today, either?”

Sokka studied the bandaged form of the infamous X-Soldier taking up all the room on his bed. “Yeah, I probably shouldn’t.”

“A shame,” Ji tutted. “Get better soon!”

“I’ll try,” Sokka sighed, and clicked off. 

Sokka already had his boots tied when it occurred to him that, if Zuko woke up while he was gone, he might be confused enough to try to move again, and he really didn’t want Katara to berate him for it. He grabbed a piece of printer paper and wrote, ‘Went to store. Be back soon - Sokka,’ and then taped it directly to Zuko’s bandaged chest. Snickering to himself, Sokka patted Zuko on the head for good measure, and then stomped out of the apartment. 

When he returned, plastic bags jangling around his arms, ice coffee held sloppily in the same hand that also held his key, Zuko was awake, and Sokka’s note was now in shreds on the floor. 

“Sleeping beauty arises!” Sokka declared, shutting the door with his hip. 

He didn’t hear what Zuko had to say to that because he was wearing headphones, but it was probably something very intelligent like “Uh” or “Don’t call me that.”

Sokka situated most of his bags on the floor and slid his headphones down around his neck as he came to stand at Zuko’s bedside. 

Zuko squinted up at him, as if he was barely awake, or maybe Sokka was actually the sun and his mere presence was blinding him. 

“How’s the notorious killer weapon the X-Soldier feeling this afternoon?” Sokka asked, hand on his hip. 

“Not,” Zuko mumbled, which was pretty bad as far as coherent statements went. 

Sokka took a sip of his ice coffee. “Ah-huh,” he said. “Well, good news. Being the ever-conscientious and intelligent planner that I am, I’ve decided that today’s going to be bath day.”

“Bath day,” Zuko repeated slowly. 

“No offense, dude, but you _reek._ ” 

“Uh,” Zuko drew out, as if he didn’t know what to say to that. “Sorry.”

“It’s probably not your fault, being shot and all. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll try not to.” 

Zuko, Sokka was beginning to learn, had a particular talent for droll understatements. 

Sokka would have clapped him on the shoulder, but he felt the phantom presence of Katara’s disappointment looming over him like a giant mallet about to squish him for injuring her patient. He ended up doing a rigorous thumbs-up. “That’s the spirit, you murderous man.”

Zuko blinked at him. “I think you’re insulting me?”

“You figured it out all on your own,” Sokka cooed, pretending to be touched. “I’m so proud.”

Zuko’s expression quickly turned to flat unamusement. 

“So,” Sokka said. “If you’re ready to be awake for the day, I’m going to carry you to the bathroom.” 

“Wait—” Zuko said, a tad breathlessly, “You were serious?”

Sokka took one last sip of his iced coffee, then placed the empty cup on his nightstand. “Katara backed me up. We gotta limit your chance of infection or whatever. Which means bath time. You ready?”

Sokka didn’t wait for much of a response before he hefted Zuko up into his arms. Zuko, a couple inches shorter than Sokka, still wasn’t a lightweight, Sokka thought again. He was about one hundred and eighty centimeters of raw, corded muscle, and wow— Sokka was going to stop thinking about that right now. 

Sokka deposited him on top of the closed toilet seat, where he sat stiffly, slightly hunched over. Sokka hovered his hands over Zuko’s shoulders, as if to make sure he wasn’t going to keel over, but quickly withdrew them. “Wow, you okay there?”

“Fine,” Zuko grunted. 

Sokka snapped his fingers as an idea came back to him. “You can probably take some more painkillers. I’ll grab ‘em.”

Zuko was quickly presented with two more round white pills and a glass of water. 

“What do you mean by ‘probably’?” Zuko asked darkly. 

“I mean, you know, _probably_. There’s a chance. A possibility.”

“Great,” Zuko sighed. “Let’s gamble with my life. Thanks a lot, doctor.”

“You’re not entirely wrong,” Sokka said, chagrined, as Zuko downed the pills with hands that were just slightly shaking. “With the doctor part, I mean.” He cleared his throat. “I’m working on my doctorate. Not a medical doctor like Katara, but, you know. Mechanical engineering.” 

“Huh,” Zuko said. “That’s pretty cool.”

“You think?” Sokka asked, smiling. 

“Yeah.” Zuko looked up at him with a face that was open, like the idea that anyone would think it wasn’t cool was beyond his understanding. “I didn’t know you were so smart. I guess the textbooks should’ve given it away.”

Sokka laughed and scratched at the back of his head. “Yeah, there’s only so many books you can pirate before the professor starts demanding you bring it to class.”

“Huh,” Zuko said. “I wouldn’t know. I never went to college.”

Sokka didn’t know why that surprised him. Lots of people didn’t go to college, like Toph, and they were doing fine. Better, even. Well, he supposed that Zuko wasn’t doing better, since he was here sitting on Sokka’s toilet. 

Sokka crossed his arms. “College isn’t for everyone.”

Zuko looked past him with a frown. “Yeah,” he said, but Sokka wasn’t sure whether he was actually agreeing or just saying whatever he thought Sokka wanted to hear. 

Sokka decided that he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “I bought you some clothes to change into. Well, underwear. I don’t exactly have a lot of cash at the moment, so you’re taking whatever sweats I find in my drawer. Got you a toothbrush, too.”

Zuko blinked himself back to the present. “Thank you, Sokka.”

“Don’t thank me yet!” Sokka declared. “Would it be weird helping you strip? It would, wouldn’t it?”

Zuko’s eyes grew wide, and Sokka found it funny how his face grew red, too. The fearsome X-Soldier was blushing! Hell, would it be weird to take out his phone right now? Yeah, it probably would. Sokka covered his mouth to keep himself from laughing outright.

“Are you _laughing?”_ Zuko demanded. 

“N-no,” Sokka spluttered. 

“Stop that!” Zuko yelled weakly. “You’re _not_ helping me strip! Get out of the bathroom!”

“Okay! Okay!” Sokka finally got his laughter under control. “Sorry. It’s just— well. Can you? Change your clothes?”

Clearly, Sokka had triggered some latent temper in Zuko, and as he was now, basically fuming through his ears, it was a lot easier to see that he really _was_ the X-Soldier, their resident Enemy Number One. 

“Yes!” Zuko barked. 

Sokka would have been fine with that answer, except he did have a responsibility to his sister not to let Zuko move, and changing clothes did involve a lot of movement. “ _Without_ hurting yourself?” Sokka clarified.

Zuko’s silence was answer enough. 

“Okay, man to man,” Sokka started, metaphorically buckling himself into one hell of a conversation, “We’ve already made a pact of solidarity. I take you to the shitter when you need to piss. It’s not so far removed to help you take a bath. I mean, men see each other naked at hot springs all the time. That’s not weird! This isn’t weird. This is fine.”

Zuko’s expression could only be described as aghast. Sokka, internally, was absolutely in agreement, but he couldn’t let that show because _someone_ had to be a man about this. Zuko desperately needed to change his clothes and get rid of all the dried blood covering him. There was no getting around it. 

“Listen, nurses do this stuff all the time. Katara said so.”

Zuko spent the next half-minute examining everything in the bathroom, the tub, the sink, Sokka’s poster of a cactus, Sokka’s toothbrush, the vanilla-scented hand soap— everything except for Sokka himself. 

“...it wouldn’t be weird,” Zuko eventually said, staring at the cactus poster. 

“No,” Sokka agreed, his voice cracking. “Not weird at all. Just two guys, seeing each other’s wangs.”

“I think you just made it weird.”

Sokka winced. “No,” he denied, but it sounded fake, even to him. “No,” he said more firmly. “It’ll hardly be a bath, ‘cause you’re not supposed to get your bandages wet. Just sit in an inch of water, wipe yourself off, put some shampoo in your hair, and then put on some new clothes. Easy stuff. I’ll just sit with my back to you, and uh, move you from here to there.” Sokka pointed from the toilet to the tub. 

Zuko looked like he was desperately trying to believe Sokka. “It wouldn’t be weird.”

“Nah,” Sokka said. “Normal, regular stuff.”

“Right. Just two guys sitting in a bathroom.”

“Just two guys!” Sokka agreed. 

When it finally came down to it, when Sokka had filled the tub with its inch of water and had retrieved a bowl from the kitchen and a clean washcloth, when he had adjusted the positioning of his shampoo bottle ten times, there was no getting around it. 

It was absolutely, completely, one hundred percent weird. 

Sokka desperately couldn’t let in on, though. He schooled his face into one of calm seriousness, spun around on his heel, stepped in front of Zuko, bent down on one knee, and started untying Zuko’s muddy boots. Really, he should’ve taken them off already. 

Neither of them said a thing, and Sokka couldn’t tell if that was making it better or worse. Soon, both his boots were off, thrown into a pile on the bathroom tile, and then came Zuko’s socks, which reeked. 

Something must have shown on Sokka’s face, because Zuko snickered to himself. It momentarily stopped Sokka in his tracks, hearing Zuko let out a tiny, quiet bite of laughter, his hand covering his mouth as if to conceal it. 

“Is this funny to you?” Sokka asked indignantly. 

“Sorry,” Zuko was quick to say. “Guess I should stand up?”

Sokka pushed himself to his feet. “Don’t dodge the question.” He paused, momentarily at a loss for how to go about this, but he decided to reach under both of Zuko’s arms in a pseudo-embrace, lifting the other man slowly to his feet. Zuko’s arms quickly moved to clutch tightly at the back of Sokka’s shoulders, arms straining to keep himself from collapsing. 

They were trapped in that position for what seemed like too long. Sokka could feel Zuko’s breath on his face, the heat radiating off his body. He was very warm. He had some black stubble coating his jaw, and Sokka wondered what it would feel like to run his hand down his rough cheek. 

“Uh,” Sokka stuttered, trying to quickly shove his bad thoughts into a mental cabinet labeled ‘Delete’ and simultaneously herd all of his good thoughts back to the forefront of his consciousness like the good little sheep they were. 

When Zuko spoke, Sokka felt his breath on his face. “Guess I’ll, uh.” Sokka saw his throat bob as he swallowed. “Take off my pants.”

Sokka closed his eyes. “Yeah, man,” he said, but unfortunately it came out at a higher register than he wanted it to. “No time like the present.” That one came out in his normal tone of voice. 

Zuko removed one of his hands from Sokka’s shoulders. Presumably he reached down to his waist and— Sokka started thinking about the heat equation. 

There was a specific problem that the Mechanist and his lab were tackling that had to do with heat transfer through mixtures of metals, and Sokka was currently working on developing a thermal insulator that limited convection. 

“Uh, Sokka?”

“Hm?” 

“Are we doing this?”

Sokka sprung his eyes open, face to face with Zuko, with his unruly black hair and scary burn scar, and his open, golden doe eyes, who nodded his head towards the tub. Sokka instantly remembered what he was doing, and he did _not_ look down. 

Both of Zuko’s arms came to grip around Sokka’s neck, and that meant— 

“Gonna grab your legs now,” Sokka said in a single, strained hissing noise. 

It was exactly like carrying Zuko while he was wearing pants, except he wasn’t wearing pants, and it was two steps to the tub, and then Sokka just had to slowly bend his knees like he was doing a squat at the gym as he lowered Zuko into the bath, and then he could take his hands away and go sit in a corner somewhere, maybe text Aang something about regretting his life decisions. 

Sokka sat with his back leaning against the tub, knowing his face was flaming, while Zuko sat neatly inside it, not that he was looking anywhere near Zuko at the moment. Who knew what expression Zuko was making, whether he was furious or embarrassed, humiliated or outraged. They might never be able to look each other in the eyes again. 

Sokka heard a sound that took him a moment to place. It was Zuko’s quiet little laugh. 

“What are you laughing at?” Sokka asked. 

“Nothing.”

Sokka quickly covered his face with one of his hands. “This isn’t funny. We had a pact.”

“Yeah, sorry, I think I’m high.”

It was so utterly unexpected and so utterly unlike what an actually high person would say that Sokka immediately burst into laughter, slapping his thigh. “What!” he howled. 

“I feel kind of… light. Like I’m floating. Am I floating?”

“Oh, dear La,” Sokka giggled, trying to pull himself together with every inch of his iron willpower. “What else are you feeling?”

“Kind of… numb. I don’t feel the gunshot anymore.”

“That’s— that’s good, right?”

“Am I dying?”

A spike of panic spurred Sokka to spin around on the bathroom tile, leaning his elbows on the lip of the tub. Zuko laid with his head lolling against the wall. His bandages were all still dry. Sokka reached out and felt Zuko’s forehead with the back of his hand, but he couldn’t tell if it was any warmer than it should be. Zuko calmly watched him do it. 

“Why do you think you’re dying?” Sokka asked. 

“I don’t know,” Zuko said. “I feel like I should have died.”

Sokka’s brows scrunched up in worry. “Maybe those pills were a bad idea. I’m going to call Katara.”

As Sokka reached toward his jean pocket, Zuko weakly grabbed his wrist. “No, it’s fine.”

“Dude,” Sokka scoffed. “You’re obviously not fine.”

Zuko shook his head. “I don’t want to bother her.”

Something in Sokka’s heart softened at hearing that. “You’re not going to be bothering her. She lives for this kinda stuff.”

Zuko shook his head again. 

Sokka reluctantly returned his hand to the lip of the tub. He realized that Zuko hadn’t let go of his wrist, but now the other man slid it away, resting it in the scant layer of water at the bottom of the tub. 

Sokka’s wandering eyes saw fit to inform him that Zuko was still naked, at this moment, and with a yelp Sokka spun around and once again sat with his back against the tub, crossing his arms. 

He heard Zuko sigh. “Can you hand me the washcloth?”

Right, the whole damn purpose of this nightmare. 

Sokka filled the bowl with warm water from the tap and set it on the lip of the tub where Zuko could easily reach it. He threw the washcloth at him, and he caught it. “Soap,” Sokka pointed to the soap. “I’m going to go get you some clothes. Scream if anything happens.”

It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that Sokka fled from the bathroom. 

“Stupid,” he muttered to himself as he dug through his dresser. He couldn’t give Zuko his favorite pair of sweatpants. What if Sokka wanted to wear them? It would have to be his third favorite, a pair of grey sweatpants with Ba Sing Se Badgers printed along the side in green. For the shirt, he picked a white tee printed with the fake periodic table element ‘Um, the Element of Surprise,’ because Sokka always thought it was very funny. 

To put off having to return to the bathroom, he changed the blankets on his bed, throwing the mud and blood-stained ones into his hamper. It was when he started cleaning off his nightstand, still leaving the bloody bullet where it was, and then doing his dishes, that he realized he was actively procrastinating. 

He knocked on the bathroom door before he entered it. He set his spare shirt and pants on the sink with the unopened pack of underwear and still-packaged toothbrush. “Everything okay in here?” he asked brusquely as he kicked Zuko’s dirty clothes and boots into a pile in the corner. Sokka opened up the cabinet in the mirror over the sink to pull out his deodorant. 

“I slipped and drowned myself,” he heard Zuko say. 

Sokka felt whiplash as he jerked his head in Zuko’s direction, but the other man was in the exact same position as Sokka had left him. Now his hair was wet, half-falling into his eyes, and littered with white soap bubbles. 

“In an inch of water?” Sokka asked. 

“It could happen.”

Sokka snorted. “I’ve got your clothes here. Are you clean yet?”

“Do you have somewhere to be?”

“You can’t say you’re having a good time in the bath I forced you into.”

“Why not?”

Sokka jerked his head away before he could see whatever expression Zuko was making, because he shouldn’t be looking at him at all, damn it, and turned to look at himself in the mirror instead, inadvertently bracing himself against the sink. “It’s illegal.”

He heard Zuko snort. “Hate to break it to you, buddy, but my whole existence is illegal.”

Sokka struggled to hold in his smile. Zuko had him there. “Touché.” 

There was the sound of splashing water, like Zuko had shifted positions. “Hey, Sokka?”

“Hm?”

“Can I get out of here now?”

Sokka snapped into action like he’d suddenly had ice water thrown over his head. “Yeah, of course!” He had to look at Zuko again as he rushed over to the tub, but he kept his eyes trained on his face like a good heterosexual enemy-turned-questionable-ally would do, not a bisexual disaster that felt absolutely helpless as a soap bubble dripped down onto Zuko’s unscarred cheek. 

Bath day was a terrible idea. 

“Um,” Sokka stuttered. “You’ve got— There.” Sokka didn’t know what had compelled him to reach out and wipe off the soap bubble with his thumb, but it made Zuko grow completely still. “You didn’t—” Sokka had to clear his throat. “There’s still soap in your hair.”

“Is there?” Zuko asked, his mouth barely moving. 

Sokka’s breath caught in his throat as his gaze drew down to that mouth and how close it was. Maybe thirty centimeters away. If Sokka just lent a bit closer, he could— 

Then his phone buzzed, and Sokka tore his gaze away from Zuko like he’d been burned. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw that it was a text from Katara. 

_How’s the guy?_

Sokka ran a hand over his hair, smoothing over any tiny pieces that escaped his wolftail, and put his phone back in his pocket. “Towel,” Sokka said, mostly to himself. “Towel,” he said again as he stood up, searching his bathroom for a clean blue towel and then throwing it at Zuko’s head like it was a large terrycloth veil. 

Zuko dragged it off his face like Sokka had slapped him with a raw fish. 

“Get yourself dry,” Sokka said. “I’m not your maid.”

Zuko didn’t have anything to say to that, and that was fine. 


	5. movies & melancholy

Seeing the fearsome X-Soldier in Sokka’s cheap t-shirt and baggy sweatpants was an experience— let alone being the person to help _put them on his body_ — which, all in all, meant that Sokka was going to take this experience and seal it away in his memory forever like a cursed amulet. 

Drugged as he was, the other man was oddly loose and pliant in Sokka’s arms— like a sleepy cat, his damp hair lolling against Sokka’s shoulder. Sokka tried not to drop him unceremoniously on the bed like a bride during her wedding night and— 

Everything about this situation was so uniquely challenging. Sokka didn’t normally drink, but he felt like he had to, under these circumstances. 

With Zuko propped up against the headboard with all of Sokka’s pillows, Sokka himself crawled into the bed next to him. He crossed his arms behind his head and studied the ceiling. 

“What are you doing?” he heard Zuko ask from less than a foot away. 

“I’m lounging. It’s my bed. I’m allowed to lounge in it.”

“Oh,” Zuko said. “Okay.”

The two of them sat in silence, though Sokka couldn’t say that it was awkward, not after the situation they’d just gone through. Sokka was beginning to think that he and Zuko could both strip naked and run through a mud puddle together and it would hardly phase them. 

“Hey, Sokka?” Zuko began, oddly hesitant. “My jacket. Could you give it to me?”

Sokka furrowed his brow. “Why— so you can pull out your hidden gun and shoot me?”

“I don’t have a hidden gun.”

“Of course you’d say that.”

“If I were hiding anything, it’d be a knife—”

Sokka abruptly sat up on the bed. “You’re hiding a knife?”

Zuko paused for just a moment too long. “No.”

“Where is it?” Sokka demanded, turning to face him. 

“Where’s what?” Zuko said, looking firmly away from him. 

“I swear if it’s up your ass—”

Zuko swung around, completely outraged. “I don’t have a fucking knife up my ass, are you fucking _kidding_ me?”

Sokka winced, nodding his head from side to side. “Well. All right. You got a point there.”

“Was that a fucking pun?”

“Not a _fucking_ pun, per se.”

Zuko rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and slouched back against the pillows. “I think I hate you.”

“Darling,” Sokka said, clutching at his heart. “How could you say such hurtful things?”

Zuko let out a soft snort. “You’re ridiculous.”

Sokka slid off the bed with a smirk and walked over to his desk chair, where he’d placed Zuko’s patrol jacket. Just to be sure, he checked all its pockets again— just the lighter and the cigarette pack— and then he decided to run his hand along all the seams, just to see if there were any mysterious hidden knife-like objects. 

“You’re not going to find anything,” Zuko said. 

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Sokka sniffed.

“Look,” Zuko said, his voice coming out as more of a growl. “I don’t need the jacket, can you just hand me the—”

“Oh, you want _this?_ ” Sokka taunted, holding up the pack of Lucky Star cigarettes like a burglar holding a rich woman’s jewelry. 

“Yes,” Zuko said, surly, and his voice was fairly raspy— _of course,_ he was a smoker. Sokka had idly noted that fact days ago, it seemed, but only now was it making itself apparent. 

Sokka hummed and tapped the pack against his chin. “Not only my sworn enemy, but a drug addict, too.”

“Sokka,” Zuko said lowly, holding out his hand. 

Sokka shook his head. “Oh no. Definitely not. If I let you smoke in here my sister would kill me. For various reasons, that is,” Sokka said, gesturing frantically, “The _least_ of all being the fact that you’re currently tripping on illegal painkillers right now.”

Zuko collapsed his hand back onto the bed. “I guess,” he started slowly. “I guess I can’t argue with that.”

“That’s a good boy,” Sokka chirped. He placed the lighter and the pack down the nightstand, though, because he did feel a little bad. He’d never smoked before, but he knew it could get pretty bad if you suddenly went cold turkey. 

Another fact about Zuko’s belongings suddenly clicked in his head. 

“You don’t have a cell phone,” Sokka announced, mostly to himself. He found his eyes landing on Zuko anyways, because that was something kinda strange. Who didn’t have a cell phone? For that matter, who carried around a lighter and _not_ a phone?

“In case you haven’t noticed,” Zuko said tiredly, “I don’t have much of anything.”

“No, I get it, you’re on the run, we all know this—” Sokka waved his hands dismissively, “But no phone means no one to contact. I can’t believe I haven’t asked this before now!” He slapped his forehead. “You must have someone to stay with, right? You must know someone to help you! When you jumped ship, you must’ve been running towards someone! You had to have had some kind of plan which wasn’t just…”

The more Sokka looked at Zuko’s blank expression, the more momentum he lost. 

“Which wasn’t just ‘collapse on the street’?” Sokka finished lamely. “Please tell me that you had a plan.”

Zuko picked at the frayed hem of his borrowed shirt. “There is someone.”

“Great!” Sokka said, pulling out his phone. “I can contact them for you, if you want.”

“I don’t know his number.”

“Ah,” Sokka said, drooping again. “Can I ask who it is?”

Zuko seemed to struggle to talk about it. “My uncle.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

Again, it seemed like every word was being dragged out of Zuko’s mouth. “No.”

Sokka sighed and moved to sit back on the bed, crossed-legged against the headboard. This was a brilliant chance to find out more about Zuko, but hell if it wasn’t going to be like picking shards of glass out of a person’s foot. “What about your parents?”

Zuko seemed to involuntarily twitch. “I don’t have them,” he said, but something about his tone was very off. 

“Okay,” Sokka drew out. “Did they pass away, or—?”

“Sokka,” Zuko said with a weighty precision. “My father is the one who ordered me to be shot. My sister is the one who did it.”

There was really nothing Sokka could say to that. Not a lame, ‘I’m sorry,’ not a weak, ‘That’s rough, buddy,’ not a half-hearted, ‘There, there.’ Really, what was he supposed to say? What was he supposed to do?

“Fuck,” Sokka said. 

Zuko said nothing, and Sokka didn’t blame him. 

“And here I was thinking my family issues are pretty bad,” Sokka muttered to himself. 

Zuko beat an irregular rhythm on the sheets with his fingers, and Sokka guessed that talk-time was over. He was about to get up and go start analyzing some data from the lab— something droll that he’d been putting off— when Zuko proved him wrong. 

“What are they?” Zuko asked. “Your family issues.” 

“Oh, uh,” Sokka hesitated, but he figured if Zuko had been able to share something so personally heart-wrenching, Sokka didn’t have any excuse to keep it to himself. “My mom died in the war when I was pretty young. Haven’t seen my dad more than once in the past ten years.”

“Oh,” Zuko said. 

“Yeah,” Sokka said. 

The two of them sat in silence, still and somber. Sokka found himself wishing, for once, that someone would ring the doorbell, or he’d get a text, and that would break him out of it, but nothing happened. 

Sokka supposed that it was up to him. 

“Want to watch a movie?”

Zuko slowly turned to look at him. “A movie?”

“Yeah, you know. Moving pictures. They’ve been around for more than a century now, tiny little people dancing on a screen?”

“I know what a movie is.”

Sokka wiped his forehead. “What a relief. You exist in our current timeline.”

He heated up some leftovers in the microwave, and the two of them ate on Sokka’s bed, watching a rom com about an upcoming lawyer who lands a job at an international law firm and falls in love with a single father. Sokka couldn’t say that he was paying much attention to it, which was a shame, because he tended to like romances. 

When it finally ended, Sokka looked back at Zuko to see what he thought of it, but the other man’s head was down-turned, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and even. He’d fallen asleep sitting up. 

Sokka furrowed his brow and thought that he looked very sweet, like this. 

“Sleeping again, huh?” he murmured. Silently, he slid off the bed and walked to Zuko’s side, gently laying him flat on the bed, tucking a blanket up to his chin. “Good night, sleeping beauty.”

If his hand lingered a little too long when he patted down the blanket, no one was there to see it. 

Sokka was beginning to think that he was totally, irreversibly, insurmountably screwed. 

* * *

Okay, so maybe Sokka thought that Zuko was perhaps a little handsome. That was fine. Except maybe it wasn’t fine, because Sokka had always had a bad habit of falling for someone fast and hard. He’d meet someone who said something just a little bit funny, who thought that Sokka was just a little bit funny, and suddenly Sokka was jumping headfirst into a romantic pit that always ended badly. 

Maybe it didn’t help that his first girlfriend had died. 

Maybe it didn’t help that, when he finally got around to dating again, he’d dated her for two straight years before breaking up, though Sokka wasn’t sure if it had even hurt, at that point, when Suki had said that she had to move away for work, because they’d hardly seen each other anyways— 

He was getting off track. What he was trying to say was that Sokka’s feelings were dumb and completely illogical, because Zuko had been his enemy only a couple of days ago— (even though Zuko had claimed to not remember him, which still _stung_ ) — and he was basically a homeless enemy of the state, freeloading in Sokka’s apartment, and not even because he _wanted to_ , but because he had no other choice. 

As far as romantic prospects go, Zuko wasn’t even in the same room. So Sokka was going to forget about his dumb feelings, and as soon as Zuko left they’d go away like they’d never been there in the first place. After all, Zuko was just some guy who said sorry too much, who had a dry, pessimistic kind of wit, and he _smoked—_

Hell, if Sokka kissed him, he’d probably taste like nicotine— 

Oh, shit. That was kinda hot. 

No, he berated himself. That wasn’t hot. That was gross. Zuko was gross. 

It was late when he finally decided to crawl into his bed, well after midnight had passed. He’d been debating it with himself for a stupid amount of time, but it wasn’t like the bed was too small for two people, and it was _Sokka’s_ bed, dammit, and fuck if he wasn’t going to sleep in it!

Zuko hadn’t stirred much of the day, either, so Sokka wasn’t expecting much when he settled himself down and pulled his blanket over him like he was rolling himself into a spring roll, ending up on his back. Zuko was on his back too, less than a foot away, though his eyes were closed, while Sokka had taken up his ever-ongoing study of the ceiling. There was tiny bit of water damage over in the corner, now that he was looking at it. 

This apartment was so shitty. 

The sleep-roughened voice nearly made him jump. “What time is it?”

Sokka turned his head, but he couldn’t see more than Zuko’s outline in the dim light of the moon creeping through the window. 

“Late,” Sokka said. 

Zuko made a disgruntled noise. “How long was I...?”

“A while.” 

Zuko let out a soft huff. 

Sokka tried closing his eyes, thinking that would be the end of it, but he snapped them open again when Zuko said, “Sorry for falling asleep.”

“Hah?” Sokka drew out in a tired, annoyed drone. 

“During the movie,” Zuko said. 

In the darkness, both of their voices were near a whisper. 

“Don’t worry about it, man,” Sokka said, his voice coming out slightly slurred. 

“It’s just—” Zuko started, and then hesitated. “That was the first time someone ever showed me a movie.”

If Sokka’s eyes had been drooping closed before, now he felt like he’d never been more awake. “You gotta be kidding me.”

There was a poignant pause. “I’m bothering you,” Zuko said. “Sorry. I’ll be quiet now.”

“Please tell me you’ve at least _seen_ a movie before.”

Zuko took on a more agitated tone. “Of course I’ve fucking _seen_ a movie before.”

“How— by looking at one of those previews at a TV in a store window like the sad little pauper boy in that movie that you’ve probably never seen because apparently you live in the feudal ages?”

Zuko made another disgruntled sound. “That was a lot of words.”

“Get used to it,” Sokka grumbled. “I’m full of words and ready to say them.”

“I’ve _seen_ movies before,” Zuko stressed. “But no one’s ever made me watch one.”

“Which movie?” Sokka asked.

“What?”

“Tell me which movie you’ve seen, because, at this point, I really don’t believe you.” A thought bounced through Sokka’s sleep-addled mind. “Fuck, and you said you were a theatre kid?”

“Because I _was_ a theatre kid. I was in the drama club during high school.”

Sokka let out a snort. “Were you also the star basketball player?”

“What?” Zuko spluttered. “No. I didn’t have time for that.”

“See, this just proves my point about you never having seen a movie in your life.”

Zuko didn’t immediately say anything to that, and when he finally managed to squeak something out, it had a strangled quality to it. “That was a movie reference.”

“Ding, ding, ding. And the man takes the gold.”

Zuko lapsed back into silence, and Sokka wished he could bury his pang of disappointment. Listening to Zuko’s soft raspy voice was better than the howling of the wind against his window, or the sound of a distant siren warbling through the city. It lasted long enough that Sokka closed his eyes, trying his hardest to make his mind go blank.

“I can’t remember what it’s called,” Zuko murmured. 

This time, Sokka didn’t bother to open his eyes. His own voice took on a slurred quality. “Hmm. Likely story.”

“We weren’t allowed to watch much television,” Zuko said. 

Sokka wasn’t sure who ‘we’ was supposed to be, but he was too tired to ask. “Didn’t watch much when I was a kid, either. Kinda poor,” Sokka wasn’t sure if he was making any sense. “Got made fun of a lot.”

“Like you’re making fun of me?”

“Hey,” Sokka protested. “This is for your own good.”

Zuko let out a low chuckle. It wasn’t so much a laugh as a deep rumble in his chest, something that Sokka felt shake the bed. “If you say so.”

“I do say so.”

“You say a lot of things.”

“It’s part of my devilishly attractive charm.”

“Yeah,” Zuko said, almost too quiet for Sokka to make out. 

“Now fuck off,” Sokka grumbled. 

The words floated to him from the other side of the bed, amused and warm. “Yes, sir.”

Sokka’s last thought before going to sleep was that Zuko could be pretty funny, sometimes. If he tried to be. 

* * *

The next morning, Zuko insisted that he was now perfectly healed and capable of running laps around the block, he was feeling so great. To his credit, he’d managed to sit up on his own, and even swing his legs off the bed. 

Sokka had his hair down and a strand of it was hanging stubbornly in front of his eyes. He brushed it out of the way. He wondered how Zuko survived with his mop of a haircut without tripping over a cord and breaking his face on the hardwood. Well, Zuko hadn’t actually tried walking, now had he? Sokka should preemptively cover the floors in pillows. 

“You’re feeling fine, huh?” Sokka asked, crossing his arms, trying to infuse as much doubt into the question as he could muster at 8:30 AM. 

“Yes,” Zuko said sulkily. “I’m fine. Go to work.”

Sokka narrowed his eyes. “What if I don’t _want_ to go to work?” 

Zuko frowned at the floor. “I’m better now. You don’t need to carry me anywhere.”

Sokka stopped himself from saying, _What if I_ want _to carry you somewhere?_ He shook his head and wished that he’d made some coffee before having this conversation. “You can say whatever you want, but Katara hasn’t given me the go-ahead to let you move on your own. You want to blow your stitches for a _second_ time?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

Sokka threw up his arms. “I’m calling Katara.”

“Fine, call Katara.”

“I’m doing it— I’m calling her!”

“Do it, then!”

Sokka had his phone in his hand, and he dramatically opened up his recents and pressed down Katara’s name like he was slamming down on a big red button. He put the phone on speaker and gave Zuko a stubborn, taunting look. 

Zuko gave him a stubborn look right back. 

Katara picked up with a benign, “Hello?”

“Zuko’s being a stubborn dick!” Sokka yelled. 

“No, I’m not!” Zuko yelled. 

“He’s saying he can move around now when he clearly can’t!” Sokka yelled. 

“I’m feeling okay! I know more about my own body than _you do!”_

“You had a bullet in you two fucking days ago!” 

“That’s normal!” Zuko yelled. 

“What!” Sokka screeched. “That’s nowhere _near_ fucking normal!”

If Katara had tried to say something, Sokka didn’t catch the beginning of it. When the two of them finally managed to calm down enough, they were in time to hear Katara sigh out, “ _Boys_.”

Sokka hunched his shoulders and stared at Katara’s name on his phone. 

“Are you both done being pissy brats?” she asked. 

Zuko pressed his mouth into a displeased line. 

“Never,” Sokka said. 

“Figures,” Katara sighed. “I think I caught some of the problem between all your yelling. How are you feeling?” This must have been directed at Zuko. 

“Okay,” Zuko said. 

“Are you always this descriptive?” Katara asked. “I mean your injury. Is there any more blood? Different types of pain? Are you feeling sick? Sokka, check if he has a fever.”

Sokka found himself doing as she asked before even thinking about it, pressing the back of his hand against Zuko’s forehead. Zuko didn’t move, but he did watch him do it with a furrowed brow. Sokka slid his hand away. 

“He seems, for lack of a better word, okay,” Sokka told Katara. 

“I swear, the two of you,” Katara muttered. “Zuko?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you answer my questions, please?”

Haltingly, as if he had lost all momentum from arguing with Sokka, Zuko told Katara that he wasn’t in any more pain than he’d been before, and even pulled up Sokka’s borrowed shirt to check the status of his bandages. There was no extra blood as far as he could see. 

“Hm,” Katara hummed. “You might be okay to do some light walking.”

“Katara!” Sokka exclaimed, as if he’d been betrayed. 

“Don’t _Katara_ me!” she said. “He says he knows his own limits. If he feels like he’s able to walk a couple steps without making himself worse, then who am I to stop him!”

“His doctor!” Sokka yelled. 

“You _know_ I haven’t gotten my license yet.” 

“You’re his doctor!” he said again, shaking his phone as if that would shake some sense into Katara, but it probably only made his voice sound warbly. 

“Look,” Katara said. “My stop’s here.” She must have been on the train, probably about to start her first shift at the hospital in the Middle Ring. “Remember what I told you about reopening the wound. If it happens again, you may need an actual doctor. So make sure it doesn’t happen, all right?”

“I understand,” Zuko said solemnly. 

“And take more painkillers. We need to get rid of the evidence.”

Zuko raised his eyebrow, looking mildly disturbed. 

“Play nice with each other, boys! Bye for now!” 

The call ended, and Sokka stared blankly at his phone for a moment, before shaking himself into action and slipping it back into his pocket. 

Sokka had previously believed the two of them were beyond awkward silences, but, as Sokka looked down to meet Zuko’s eyes, he realized that no one was ever truly beyond awkward silences. Especially not when you were Sokka, and not, apparently, when you were Zuko. 

“Guess that’s that,” Sokka tried, half-shrugging. He wasn’t sure if he believed himself, and judging by Zuko’s expression, neither did he. 

“Then you’re going into work,” Zuko said in some strange mix of a statement and a question. 

Sokka tightened his mouth. “If you’re so keen on getting rid of me.”

There was a furrow between Zuko’s brows. “I’m not trying to make you do anything.”

“You _can’t_ make me do anything,” Sokka snapped. 

Zuko opened his mouth and then closed it. He opened it again and said, “That came out wrong.”

Sokka ran a hand over his face and forced out a laugh. He found himself suddenly unable to look at Zuko at all. “Look, it’s whatever. It’d probably be suspicious if I kept calling out sick, anyways.”

After a pause, Zuko said, “Yeah.”

Sokka turned away from the bed and walked to his dresser, picking up a hair tie from the top of it. “I guess I should say that you’re welcome to stay here as long as you’d like.” 

There was another pause, only longer. “I promise that I’ll leave as soon as I’m able.”

Sokka’s back was turned, so Zuko wouldn’t see the quick grimace that crossed Sokka’s face. He supposed that there really was no reason for Zuko to like him, after all. Sokka had briefly thought that they’d been developing some kind of rapport, maybe— but no. That was all Sokka’s big dumb mouth. Zuko couldn’t wait to get away from him. And why shouldn’t he? He didn’t choose for Sokka to be the one to find him bleeding out on the street.

Sokka tied his hair back, and felt eyes watching him do it. Sokka belatedly remembered Zuko’s own hair, and grabbed a second hair tie. Somehow, Sokka managed to walk back over to Zuko without looking at him. He thrusted the hair tie into Zuko’s chest and dropped it into his lap before Zuko managed to grab it. 

“Um,” Zuko said. 

“I’m going to finish getting ready,” Sokka announced. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge. Watch some TV,” here Sokka’s voice grew sharper, “Watch a movie.”

Sokka didn’t slam the door behind him, but he certainly thought about it. 


	6. smoke & sonder

Sokka came home that night with a pizza, hoping that he wouldn’t find Zuko collapsed on the floor somewhere in a pile of blood. It was all he could think about as he had sat at his desk, listened to someone’s research presentation, and checked up on the progress of his samples. The Mechanist could tell that he was distracted, and had calmly taken him aside to ask if his sister was all right. Sokka apologized for worrying him, and had said that Katara was fine. 

The Mechanist then asked if he’d run into a patrol when he shouldn’t have, or if Pyre was shutting down his apartment complex, which had happened in a lot of the seedier streets in the Lower Ring. Sokka had said no, but asked if the Mechanist could keep an ear out for anything like that turning on his street. The Mechanist had winked, because he was a member of the Avatar, and had said that he was always keeping an ear out. 

But the point was that Sokka couldn’t get the image of Zuko’s face directly after he’d dragged him up four flights of stairs— pale, drawn, and close to lifeless— out of his mind. It contrasted against the way that Sokka had found him this morning, with a certain fire in his eyes, his hair sleep-tousled, and more animated than Sokka had ever seen him. And that contrasted against Sokka’s memories of the X-Soldier, a man outfitted in full dark red tactical armor, with a dark, unreadable visored helmet. That man was pointing an assault rifle at Sokka’s chest while the near-dead Zuko was bleeding out on the floor while the ruffled, just woken up Zuko was laughing at one of Sokka’s jokes—

Sokka dreaded going home just as much as he looked forward to it. 

He slid his key into the lock, turned it with the hand that wasn’t holding the pizza box, and opened his apartment to the smell of smoke. He wrinkled his nose, waved his hand in front of his face, and then the panic set in. 

“Fire!” Sokka blurted, dashing inside with his boots still on and whipping his head around, but the bed was empty, and he wasn’t sitting in the armchair, and the bathroom door wasn’t closed— which left the kitchen. 

Sokka could clearly see him now, leaning against the counter near the stove. His back was to Sokka, but as soon as Sokka yelled, “ _Where’s the fire!?”_ Zuko jumped and turned around. 

There was a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth. 

Sokka felt his shoulders slump and he threw his eyes to the ceiling, his stomach churning with a weird mix of relief and exasperation. “ _There’s_ the fire.”

Zuko’s eyes were a little wide, guilty, almost— as if Sokka had caught him in the middle of doing something that he wasn’t supposed to do. Which was exactly what had happened. 

Sokka stormed forward until he was right in front of Zuko and then snatched the cigarette from between his lips. Zuko had stayed perfectly still, and Sokka tried to ignore the way that he was pressing Zuko up against the counter. 

“What is this!” Sokka demanded, holding the burning cigarette between two fingers and shaking it in front of Zuko’s face. “You’re still on painkillers!”

Zuko nervously flitted his eyes around the room. “They’ve mostly worn off.”

“Mostly!” Sokka howled. 

Sokka noticed that Zuko’s eyes had latched onto something on the stove, and finally made himself glance down to see what he was looking at. 

Ah, there was a second source to the smoke. 

“What have you done to my _pan!_ ” Sokka lamented, gesturing frantically with the lit cigarette at the pan on the stove that was covered in a smoking black, unidentifiable substance. 

“Uh,” Zuko said, reaching up to scratch at his cheek. Sokka could’ve sworn that his face was growing a little pink. “I was cooking.”

“You call this _cooking?_!” 

Zuko hunched down his shoulders. “I mean. I was trying to.”

Sokka dropped the pizza box on the counter and moved over to the sink, running the cigarette under the water. He wasn’t sure how people normally put them out. Usually, in TV shows, they just stamped them against a tray or something, and then threw them on the ground and stepped on them. Sokka threw it in the trash. 

“Clearly, you weren’t trying very hard,” Sokka said, wiping off his hands on a towel on the oven handle. 

Zuko winced. “Sorry. I wanted to make you something, but I— I’ve never cooked before.” 

“Wait,” Sokka said, holding up a hand. “Make _me_ something?”

Zuko half-turned away from him, contemplating his mess on the stove. “As a thank you. For helping me.”

Sokka could honestly say that he never would have seen this coming. 

He must have stood there with his mouth gaping open for too long, because Zuko said, “I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up.”

“No,” Sokka spluttered, and Zuko stopped reaching for the pan, his hand frozen in the air. “Like, really? You were trying to cook for me?”

There was something hunted about Zuko’s expression, as if he was afraid of saying anything to confirm or deny it. He forced out, “I thought you’d want to eat something.”

“Well,” Sokka bit his lip, trying to gather his thoughts from where they’d just scattered to the wind. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Aren’t you hungry?”

The question seemed to catch Zuko off-guard. “I’m okay.”

Sokka took another moment to process that, and then dismissed it when he concluded that Zuko had very little understanding of the word, ‘Okay,’ and was not to be trusted. Probably best to push him for something more explicit. “Like, when did you last eat?”

Zuko grimaced, as if preparing himself to get yelled at, and then said, “Yesterday.”

It’s a good thing he prepared himself, because Sokka yelled at him. 

“What the hell, man! I said you could eat anything in the fridge!”

Zuko winced and ducked his head. 

Sokka pressed his fingers to his temple and took a deep, calming breath. It’s been barely five minutes since he ran inside his apartment and all he’s done is steal Zuko’s cigarette and scream at him. He was pretty sure that was called harassment. 

He opened his eyes and marched toward Zuko with a determined frown. Zuko’s eyes grew wider with every step that Sokka took, until Sokka was once again right in front of him. Sokka reached out his arm and threw it around Zuko’s shoulders, and with a few unsteady lurches of Zuko’s feet, managed to steer him to the chair at the kitchen island and pressed down on his shoulders until Zuko got the picture that he was supposed to sit there. He sat stiffly, slightly hunched over the counter. 

“Now don’t move,” Sokka ordered, resisting the urge to pat Zuko’s head. 

He went back to the door and took off his boots and hung up his jacket. He shut and locked the door, not without checking the hallway for any eavesdroppers, first. That old woman Itsuki loved her gossip. 

When he went back to the kitchen, he saw that Zuko hadn’t moved from his spot. 

“Are you angry at me?” Zuko asked as soon as Sokka reappeared. “I wasn’t lying when I said I wasn’t hungry.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, drug addict.” Sokka waved his hand in dismissal. He pulled out two paper plates and busied himself with moving a slice of pizza onto each. Then he slid a plate over in front of Zuko. “Eat up, you incorrigible invalid.”

“I’m not sure what that means,” Zuko said, instead of immediately picking up the slice and eating it, which was what he should’ve been doing. 

“It means you gotta take better care of yourself, man,” Sokka said around his own bite. “Didn’t you say that you wanted to be a better person?”

Zuko blinked in surprise. “I did.”

Sokka jabbed at him with his slice of pizza. “Then try not to die before that happens.”

Zuko dutifully picked up his own slice, though he didn’t bring it to his mouth. “I’ve never really worried about myself before.”

“I can see that by the fact that you’re utterly determined to kill yourself before the age of thirty.” Zuko quirked an eyebrow, and Sokka clarified, “Nicotine kills.” Sokka internally debated with himself for a moment, and then added on, “I guess bullet wounds kill faster, though.”

Zuko let out a quiet laugh, though it didn’t have much humor in it. 

“What were you trying to make?” Sokka asked, nodding his head towards the mess on the stove, curious despite himself.

“Rice,” Zuko said. 

Sokka dramatically leaned over the counter. “That’s _rice?!”_

Zuko curled up one corner of his mouth in the tiniest of chagrined smiles. “Not anymore.”

“Dude, aren’t you like, twenty-eight? How come you’ve never cooked before?”

Zuko shrugged. “It’s never come up.”

“You’re the worst househusband ever,” Sokka sniffed. “I want a new one.”

The other man seemed to be at a loss. “I’m not your househusband.”

“If I had my way, you wouldn’t be,” Sokka said. “But beggars can’t be choosers.”

“I’m _not_ your _househusband,_ ” Zuko repeated. 

“Too late, I already invited Katara to the wedding.”

“Cancel it!” Zuko barked. 

“And tell Katara that my beautiful wedding is canceled?” Sokka gasped, completely aghast. “She’d kill me!”

“Does it look like I care?”

“Oh, not only a useless househusband, but a _mean_ one, too!”

“You’re the worst,” Zuko mumbled, and finally brought the pizza slice up to his mouth and took a bite. Sokka suddenly noticed that there was a blue band around his wrist, and realized that that must be the hair tie that Sokka had thrown at him that morning. 

“Why do you still have that?” Sokka asked with a bemused smile.

Zuko cocked his head. 

“The hair tie,” Sokka said. 

Zuko focused on the hair tie like he just remembered that it was there. “Because you gave it to me,” he said simply. 

Sokka blinked, struck by the odd solemnity of those few words. What was that supposed to mean? It was just a stupid hair tie. “To tie your hair back.”

“I don’t want to,” Zuko said. He paused, and asked, “Do you want it back?”

“No,” Sokka said. “Keep it.” He suddenly found his food a lot more interesting than before, and devoted all his energy to solidly demolishing it bite by bite. When he was finished, he brought the whole pizza box over onto the counter in front of Zuko and took out another slice. “Try to eat another piece, okay?” Sokka said. “If you’re not nauseous or anything.”

“Thank you, Sokka.”

Sokka idly noticed that Zuko was looking at him when he said it, but he couldn’t bring himself to meet his eyes. Sokka cleared his throat, and hopefully his voice was normal when he said, “No problem. But you’re cleaning the entire kitchen tomorrow.”

“All right.”

“Hey,” Sokka said, as something just occurred to him. “If you’re any good at cleaning, I might change my mind about how good of a househusband you are. You’ve at least done the dishes before, right?”

“Well,” Zuko hedged, “Not exactly.”

Sokka sighed. “Fuck, you’re hopeless.”

“Sorry.”

Sokka sighed again. 

* * *

If Sokka was being generous with himself, he might’ve said that he’d had a nagging feeling that he was forgetting something, but, truth be told, he hadn’t even considered it until his doorbell rang at about 7 PM— pretty late, considering the curfew— and when he pressed down on the intercom, a feminine voice told him, in a no-nonsense kind of voice:

“I’m about to kick your motherfucking ass, motherfucker.”

Sokka felt himself instantly break out in a cold sweat. “Toph, what—”

“I _said_ ,” she barked right over him, “Let me up there so I can kick your motherfucking ass.”

Sokka frantically looked back at Zuko, who was once again lying down, at Sokka’s insistence, but had slowly levered himself when he heard the voice over the intercom. 

“I’ll be right down,” Sokka squeaked. 

Toph didn’t say anything else, and he took his finger off the button.

“Are you allergic to dogs?” Sokka asked as he stuffed his keys into his pocket. 

“Sokka,” Zuko said slowly. “Are you calling her a bitch?”

Sokka missed his slipper and jammed his foot into the wall. He hissed to himself and clutched at it, jumping in place. “Fuck!” he howled. 

He thought he heard Zuko adjust himself on the bed, and quickly threw out, “Don’t get up! I’m fine!”

“Sokka—” Zuko said. 

“And _don’t_ call Toph a bitch if you ever want to keep breathing, okay?” Sokka finished, settling his foot back onto the ground. “She’s a pro-wrestler.”

“Oh,” Zuko said. 

“She’s also blind. Hence a seeing-eye dog. Hence my actual, not-a-joke question.”

“Wait, a blind pro-wrestler—” Zuko began. 

Sokka pulled open his door. “Allergies?” Sokka barked. 

“No—” 

Sokka shut the door behind him and jogged toward the stairs. As he descended them, two at a time, he thought about how his apartment was turning into a real hot-spot of activity, lately. He wondered why she was here, but the answer was pretty obvious, if he thought about it. Aang must have told her all about Zuko, and now she was here to see the man for herself. Well. Metaphorically. 

Outside, she was leaning casually against the brick wall of his building, arms crossed, in an overly large green hoodie with the hood up, sunglasses, and a white face mask. Toph was famous enough that she usually had to visit Sokka in a disguise, much in the same way that Aang had to, though Aang was much closer to _infamous_ than Toph was. Her seeing-eye dog, a placid little golden retriever named Badger, was sitting primly at her side. 

As always, as soon as Sokka peaked his head out the door, Toph had a near preternatural sense for it. She turned her head and said, “Took you long enough,” roughly shoving herself off the wall. 

“How are—” Sokka tried to say, but she steamrolled right over him. 

“Just because I’m not in your stupid fucking _group chats_ doesn’t mean you can keep me out of the good shit!” She marched straight up to him and poked him in the chest. The top of Toph’s head barely reached Sokka’s shoulder. “I’m so tired—” she jabbed him especially hard and Sokka wheezed, “—of being the last person to know things!”

“Sorry,” Sokka coughed, rubbing his chest. “I’ll apologize an infinite more times, but can we do that inside?”

“I guess infinity is a good place to start,” she huffed, and Badger led her through the door that Sokka held open. 

Once they were in the hallway, Sokka deemed it safe enough to say, “I honestly wasn’t trying to keep it from you. The only person I told was Katara, and Aang only knew because he showed up.”

“Oh, a lot more people know about it _now,_ Snoozles.”

Sokka felt himself falter in place. “What?”

He couldn’t see much of her face, seeing as it was covered by the mask and the sunglasses, so he couldn’t tell if she reacted one way or another. “Let’s get inside closed doors.”

Sokka frowned, and the two of them and Badger walked silently up the stairs. 

“Is there anything about him that looks weird?” Toph finally asked, before Sokka could open the door. “Anything that you’d immediately notice? Like is he really ugly?” 

He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not like you to care about stuff like that.”

Toph pulled down her face mask around her neck, so Sokka could see her smirking. “I got a bet with the Duke that he’s an ugly old man.”

“Hate to break it to you,” Sokka said idly, dusting off his shoulder. “But he isn’t an ugly old man.”

“Ugh,” Toph groaned. “Don’t tell me he’s a hot young guy.”

Sokka smiled. “He _is_ a hot young guy.”

“Ugh, horrible. This is the worst. Let’s go talk to him, I guess.”

Sokka opened the door and Toph and Badger strode inside like they owned the place. Zuko was still on Sokka’s bed, though he hadn’t laid back down, leaning his back against the headboard. 

“So this is him, huh?” Toph said to the room at large, hands on her hips. 

“You’re the Blind Bandit,” Zuko said, with not a small amount of trepidation in his voice. 

Toph cocked her head as she listened to him, and then announced, “That’s really the X-Soldier. That’s his voice.”

“You doubted it?” Sokka asked, shutting the door and coming to stand in the space between where Toph stood and Zuko laid.

Toph shrugged. “It’s kind of unbelievable, when you think about it. Also, is something on fire? It’s smoky in here.”

Sokka jerked his thumb at Zuko, not that Toph would see it, and said, “Zuko’s actually a useless drug addict.”

“Hey,” Zuko growled.

Toph barked out a laugh. “What?”

“He can’t cook _and_ he smokes,” Sokka said smugly. “He’s basically the worst person ever.”

Zuko had taken to pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“We’ve already reached the stage where we can bully him?” Toph asked, cracking her knuckles. “Excellent. This pleases the Toph.”

Sokka reached down to rest a solid hand on her shoulder, solemnly shaking his head. “Toph, I’m sorry, but the third person isn’t working for you.”

Toph jutted out her bottom lip in a subtle pout. “But my manager said—”

“No, no. Listen to the Sokka.”

She punched him in the shoulder and he cringed away, trying to keep himself from laughing. 

“Anyways,” Toph said, crossing her arms. “There was a meeting last night and you weren’t there.”

Sokka stood up straight, feeling his jovial expression evaporate into a thoughtful frown. “Was there? I didn’t get a text about it.”

“Twinkletoes called it pretty last minute. Wanted to talk to us about Enemy Number One, who isn’t, apparently, our enemy anymore. Apparently, he’s right over there.”

“Hold up,” Sokka said. “ _Everybody_ knows about him right now?” By ‘everybody,’ Sokka was, of course, talking only about members of the Avatar.

“They don’t know who he’s staying with, though judging by who _wasn’t_ there, I couldn’t be the only one who made the assumption that you got saddled with the guy.”

Sokka looked down and briefly met Zuko’s eyes. The other man looked worried, and Sokka felt much the same, though he knew he shouldn’t. He should be able to trust the Avatar, if no one else, but the idea that there were people out there beyond Sokka’s small inner circle of friends and family that knew about Zuko didn’t sit right with him. 

Maybe it was the fact that people in the Avatar hated the X-Soldier, hated him almost as much as they hated the Pyrian Empire, and they weren’t like Aang, or Katara, or even Toph. They weren’t kind and forgiving, or open and level-headed, or a stupid bleeding heart like Sokka. They were cold, hurt, and angry— bitterly, savagely angry.

Sokka ran a hand over his hair. “Thanks for the heads up, Toph.”

“Don’t worry about it, Snoozles. It’s not every day that something like _this_ guy defects. It’s bound to cause a stir.” Toph turned her head in the approximate direction of Sokka’s bed. “And I might as well ask him, since he’s right there.”

Sokka turned to look at Zuko as well, and Zuko looked a bit like he’d been thrown out onto a stage with no script. 

“What made you do it?” Toph asked evenly. 

Zuko frowned, slightly ducking his head to hide his eyes under his hair. “Do you want the good reason or the bad reason?”

“Oh, you know I want the bad,” Toph said. “But give me the good one, too.”

Zuko picked at the hem of his t-shirt. “The bad reason is that I don’t ever want to look my father in the eye again.” 

Sokka remembered Zuko’s quiet confession. _My father is the one who ordered me to be shot. My sister is the one who did it._

“The good reason is that I’m tired of hurting people.”

Toph hummed to herself. “Now, the first one I get, and the second one I don’t, but a lot of people say that’s just because I’m special.”

“You mean, like, a sadist?” Sokka muttered. 

Toph kicked his foot out from under him and he toppled to the ground. He let himself have a moment there on the floor. It was kinda nice of Zuko to look down at him with his brows furrowed, like he wasn’t sure if Sokka was okay. Sokka tried to send him a smile, to let him know that he was perfectly fine, though that only made Zuko frown harder. 

Sokka was beginning to pick himself off the hardwood when Toph said, “I’m satisfied.” She clapped her hands together. “I don’t think I need to threaten you not to hurt Sokka.”

“You talked to him for less than five minutes!” Sokka spluttered. 

“I’ve got a feel for people,” Toph said with her own kind of weighty authority. “I think he’s being sincere. You gonna hurt Sokka?” she asked. 

“No!” Zuko said immediately.

Toph gestured out at the room. “Well, there you have it.” 

Sokka shook his head, finding a smile unwittingly forming on his face. Classic Toph. 

“My driver’s going to come pick me up now,” Toph said. “I’m too busy and famous to stand in a room with you two fuckups. By the way, Sokka, next time you decide to pick up some random enemy, _call me_ , all right? And I better not be the last person you tell or I really will kick your ass.” 

Sokka bowed his head, not that Toph would see it. “I swear I won’t let it happen again.”

“Hm. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

A second passed in silence, and then Toph and Sokka both burst out laughing. 

“Ah,” Toph said, wiping at a tear that Sokka couldn’t see because of her sunglasses-disguise. “Never gets old.”

After that, she abruptly turned to leave, but to Sokka’s surprise, Zuko called out, “Wait, uh, Blind Bandit.”

Toph stopped in place and turned only half around, so that her ear was angled in Zuko’s direction. 

“I’m looking for someone,” Zuko started nervously. “I’ve been thinking— and I think someone in the Avatar may have run into him, or heard of him, or something. His name’s Iroh, though he probably goes by a different name, now. Can you—?”

“I’ll get everybody to ask around. If we’ve ever talked to an Iroh, you’ll be the first to know about it,” Toph said. “I’ll be in touch, Smokes.”

And with that, Toph and Badger swept out of the room, the door closing slightly too hard behind them, but not out of anger. Toph was just scarily strong like that. 

“You could’ve told _me_ that, you know,” Sokka huffed, scratching at the back of his head. 

Zuko looked guilty enough about it. “I just thought of it.”

Sokka let out a dramatic sigh and collapsed on the bed that normally would be occupied by Zuko’s legs, if the other man hadn’t managed to pull them up to his chest in time. “Is Iroh your uncle?”

“Yeah,” Zuko said. 

“I guess he’s wanted by Pyre, too, if he’s going by another name.”

“Yeah,” Zuko said again, but more somberly. 

“What about you?”

“ _What_ about me?” Zuko huffed, in a tone that was half-exasperated and half-amused. 

“You gonna go by another name, too?”

Zuko was silent long enough that Sokka pulled himself up to a sitting position so that he could look at him. The other man was staring intently at his knees. “I guess I haven’t thought about it.”

Sokka reached out and patted his shin, and Zuko looked up at him, startled. 

“Don’t sweat it, all right? The Avatar’s got your back.” Sokka twisted his mouth into a frown. “Or at least, I’ve got your back.” He didn’t want that to seem too intimate, so he hurriedly tacked on, “Katara and Aang and Toph, too.”

Zuko actually smiled at him, a tiny little curl of the lips that mostly showed through his eyes. Maybe he understood what Sokka was actually saying, though that was probably just wishful thinking on Sokka's part. “Thank you, Sokka. I appreciate it.”

Sokka collapsed back on the bed, because then Zuko wouldn’t see how hot his face grew. “I haven’t done any more than any other good person would do.”

“But that’s the thing,” Zuko murmured, his low, grumbling voice doing something to Sokka’s insides. “You’re a good person.”

Sokka silently shook his head, unable to hold in his smile. "Thanks for the shot of confidence, man." He couldn't take how sincere Zuko could be, sometimes, and tacked on, "Especially coming from a useless drug addict."  
  
"This useless drug addict is about to kick you."

"Hah, I'd like to see you try—"

In retrospect, Sokka shouldn't have been as surprised as he was when Zuko eventually kicked him in the side. 


	7. running & reminiscing

Sokka woke up to the sound of his phone buzzing, which wasn’t his alarm. And if it wasn’t his alarm, then there was no reason to get up, now was there? Besides, his nose was pressed into something soft and warm, and his blanket was curled loosely around him, forming a comfortable cocoon. He had at least five more minutes. 

He felt a hand gently shaking his shoulder under his blanket, and, in his sleep-addled mind, he couldn’t place why that would be happening, except that maybe the hand was connected to an arm which was connected to the warm mass that his face was pressed into. Which was weird, because Sokka hadn’t slept with anyone in years, and wasn’t that kinda sad?

A very soft voice said, near Sokka’s ear, “Sokka, your phone.”

“No,” Sokka mumbled into the person’s shoulder. “ _You’re_ phone. I’m Sokka.”

There was a breathy almost-laugh that tickled his hair. “Dude, get up.”

His first instinct was to say, “Go away,” and so he did, though he couldn’t say how coherent it came out.

“Er,” the warm mass started awkwardly. “I would but. You’re sort of. Clinging. To my arm.”

Sokka did the mental equivalent of solving the Schrödinger's equation in a 3-D infinite potential well in what must have only been a few seconds, though it certainly felt like it lasted a lifetime. When his mental math eventually pointed him to the answer, he blinked his eyes open and found his face barely five centimeters away from Zuko’s. 

Zuko had the corner of his mouth pulled up in a half-smile, though it was probably a pity smile because Sokka was an idiot and a dunce. 

Sokka sprung so far away from him that he rolled clear off the bed and landed on the floor in a haphazard pile of blankets. A part of him wanted to stay there, but another part of him thought the idea of staying still for any amount of time would kill him immediately, and so he struggled to detangle himself from the blanket trap of his own making, eventually hopping to standing on one foot, his hair sticking up in all directions, tensed like a raccoon caught stealing from the trash. 

Zuko had pushed himself up into a seat, and, to Sokka’s horror, he was massaging his arm as if he’d lost all feeling in it. 

Sokka wanted to jump into an active volcano. Sokka wanted to bury himself at the bottom of the sea. 

“Your phone’s been ringing non-stop,” Zuko said, casually, as if this was perfectly fine, and maybe it _was_ fine, because hadn’t Sokka seen Zuko butt-naked already? Surely their boundaries were a little skewed— surely Zuko didn’t hate him. He probably thought that this was some weird quirk of Sokka’s, which involved hugging people in his sleep. 

Oh, who was he kidding. Nobody had a weird quirk like that. 

“My—” Sokka stuttered like a broken computer, “—phone?” 

Zuko furrowed his brow. “It sounds important.”

Sokka, as if in a daze, located his phone on the nightstand, and then slowly picked it up. 

_Three missed calls from_ The Bossman _._

 _(1) Voicemail._

Right before Sokka’s eyes, it started ringing again, and Sokka quickly picked it up. 

“Boss?” Sokka asked, his voice coming out too rough and slow. 

“Sokka!” Ji called out. “I’m so glad I finally caught you, young man! Dire news is headed your way, dire news indeed!”

Sokka blinked rapidly. “What?”

“I’m calling from my house so I know we can talk safely.” Always good to know that the line wasn’t tapped. “I’ve heard some chatter up the grapevine that there will be a series of surprise inspections on _your_ apartment building— _today!_ The inspections have been given no end date; it’s presumed they’ll be continued until they find whichever fugitive that they’re looking for.” Sokka could imagine Ji’s knowing look. “And I do believe we know which fugitive they’re looking for, between you and me.”

Sokka clutched tightly at his phone. “How long do we have?”

“Hopefully we’ve caught it just in time, but there’s also the matter of _transportation._ ” Ji meant that Zuko wouldn’t be able to ride on any train or cab, or even walk down the street completely safely, not if there were any patrols around. “We need to get him papers.”

Sokka really hadn’t expected this to come so soon. “Can you make them?”

“I only need a good photograph. Make it professional.”

“I can do that.”

“But it’s going to take time,” Ji stressed. “Time we do not have. You need to go somewhere in the meantime, without papers. Where—?”

“Katara’s,” Sokka said immediately. “We’re in the same Ring so there’s no checkpoints. And Aang’s place can barely be termed livable.”

The Mechanist let out a short chuckle. “That young man. Okay. When it’s done, I’ll call someone to go run an errand for me. But you must go as soon as possible.”

“I will,” Sokka said seriously. “Thank you.”

“And one last thing. I’ve already hacked the CCTV footage around your apartment. So worry not about that, but beyond this street—”

“I know what to do,” Sokka promised. 

“Excellent. Please stay safe, young man.”

“You too, boss.”

Sokka ended the call feeling like his mind was pulling him in seven different directions. He looked up from his phone at Zuko— still wearing one of Sokka’s shirts, a bedsheet bunched up around his waist, his hair mussed. Sokka was suddenly struck by how domestic it looked, the two of them waking up together, side by side. 

But reality always snuck back in like a hammer to a daydream. 

“We need to _go,”_ Sokka blurted and threw himself into motion towards his dresser. 

Sokka had his shirt half-pulled off his head when Zuko asked, “What do you mean we need to _go?”_

The shirt popped off and he threw it haphazardly onto the floor. “They’re calling it a surprise inspection, but we know that they’re really looking for you.” Sokka picked up another t-shirt, though he stopped himself before he put it on backwards. “Fuck, how the hell did they find you already?”

Zuko was suspiciously silent, so Sokka sent him a quick, panicked look, the shirt still clutched in his hands. 

Zuko seemed to be staring blankly in Sokka’s direction, though at Sokka’s look he shook himself, looking vaguely uncomfortable. “I can’t exactly say that I’m… surprised.”

Sokka felt like his brain wasn’t running on all cylinders, but it was at least smart enough for him to shout, “You fucking _expected_ this to happen? _”_

Zuko winced. “Well.”

“No,” Sokka said, marching ominously back over to the bed, the shirt completely forgotten. He poked Zuko in the forehead, feeling the other man’s head slightly recoil. “You expected this to happen and you didn’t fucking _tell me?”_

Zuko went briefly cross-eyed as he followed the finger that Sokka jabbed at his face. “I didn’t know that this was going to happen, specifically, but I _did_ know that she was going to find me. It didn’t matter where I went.”

“Now who’s this _she?”_ Sokka demanded. 

“My sister,” Zuko said, as if the words were ripped out of his throat. 

Sokka almost said, ‘ _The sister that nearly killed you?’_ but he had enough tact to keep that to himself. 

“She’s very good at what she does,” Zuko continued, like it was some kind of apology. 

Sokka threw his hands up in the air. “So we’ve got some kind of super skilled assassin after you? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“Honestly?” Zuko said. “Yes, but she’s also, sort of— ” here he looked incredibly uncomfortable, “—the governor of Ba Sing Se.”

Sokka blinked rapidly, thinking of an older man with a goatee and a mustache. “You mean… Governor Long Feng?”

“I mean the actual governor,” Zuko said. 

“Oh boy, now we don’t have time to unpack _all_ of that,” Sokka sighed out. “Let’s just focus on how this is suddenly so much worse than it was before, because now the maniac after you can shut down the entire train system with a single text message. You know, usually when I ask to be challenged by the spirits-that-be, I don’t usually mean by giving me something that’s nearly impossible.”

Zuko furrowed his brow, as if Sokka’s distress was rubbing off on him. “You don’t have to do this. I don’t want to drag you down with me, Sokka. I can leave on my own.”

“Not another word!” Sokka barked. “I let myself get dragged into this mess, and I’m not leaving until it’s sorted out, all right!”

Zuko looked taken aback. Sokka left him to finish getting changed. As soon as he finished pulling up his pair of grey-washed jeans, he marched toward Zuko with a blue t-shirt as threateningly as he could manage. 

“Sokka?” Zuko asked hesitantly. 

Sokka pulled the t-shirt over Zuko’s head. “No time! Get dressed!”

Zuko spluttered, grabbing at Sokka’s hands to keep him from pulling it down any further. “I’m still wearing a shirt, you fucker!” 

“Too slow!” Sokka said, cracking a smile that he knew he shouldn’t be having, in their current circumstances, but sometimes a man sees an opportunity that may never come again. 

He finally released the shirt and Zuko ripped it off with a glower, his hair sticking up in all directions. 

Sokka skipped away before Zuko could do anything like throw something at him, like how Sokka was about to throw things at Zuko. Sokka threw another pair of sweatpants at him, some socks, and then a yellow zipper-up sweatshirt. Then it was time to go digging. He grabbed a purple baseball cap out the deep corners of his closet, and then a face mask, and then, for some reason, some pink heart-shaped sunglasses. Now _that_ was a great purchase, Sokka remembered fondly. 

Sokka strode back over with his bounty to an unsteadily standing Zuko, who was carefully pulling on the new pair of sweatpants. 

“I need to take a picture of you,” Sokka said. “We’re making you a fake ID.”

Zuko had to tie the string around the waist a bit tighter, and Sokka tried to keep his eyes away from the way that his clothes hung low on Zuko’s bandaged hips. 

“We?” Zuko asked. 

“I know a guy.” Sokka pulled out his phone, and then grabbed Zuko’s arm and tugged him in front of a relatively unscathed part of the wall, with only one instance of chipped paint. He guessed that Ji would fix it in post. He opened up the camera and held it up. 

Zuko stared resolutely ahead. 

Sokka frowned and dropped the phone. “Dude, you look like a serial killer.” Before Zuko could do anything more than start to respond, he reached out and patted down Zuko’s hair. This shut Zuko up immediately. With his fingers, biting his lip in concentration, Sokka combed a section of Zuko’s hair in front of his scar, since that was his most identifying mark. 

“Heh,” Sokka snorted. “Now you just look emo.”

“Can you start taking this a little seriously?” Zuko huffed. 

Sokka put on his most smarmy smile, once again raising his phone. “Not until you give me a little smile, serial killer.”

Zuko frowned, and said, in a tone that was dead serious, “I’m not a serial killer.”

Clearly Sokka had just accidentally knocked over a can of worms. “Didn’t think you were. Look,” he sighed. “I’m seriously not about to ask a guy who was in the military how many people he’s killed, okay? Just, like, smile at the camera. Or me, I don’t care. What’s a little smile between friends.” 

Neither of them were smiling at this point, and Sokka had half a mind to just take the picture and be done with it before he opened his mouth and _continued_ to say something that would make Zuko despise him in every possible way— and it wasn’t even 7 AM yet. 

“Sorry,” Zuko said. “I didn’t think you were— uh. It’s fine. Uh, friends?”

Even Sokka, as mighty as his intellect was, could not parse what Zuko had just said for the life of him. “Uh, come again?”

“Are we friends?” Zuko asked, slightly too loudly. 

The question rang out between them. Sokka liked to think that he was quick to recover from it, from the way that Zuko’s pretty yellow eyes scrunched up with an emotion and a force that Sokka couldn’t place. 

Sokka quickly covered up his own reaction with a smirk and by physically moving his phone in front of his face. “Only if you smile for the camera.”

Zuko gave him an uncertain look, as if he couldn’t tell if Sokka was joking or not. And honestly, what the hell was Sokka supposed to say to that middle school-ass confession? _Yes, Zuko, we’re like total besties 4ever._

To Sokka’s surprise, Zuko actually tried to smile at the camera. It was clearly forced, but at least it was subtle enough that he merely looked like he was in mild pain instead of full-on grimacing. 

Sokka found it incredibly sweet, and he snapped the picture, his own face breaking out into a huge smile. 

“Guess we’re married now,” Sokka said. “And wipe that smile off your face, are you crazy? Nobody smiles in their ID photo! Try to get with the picture here, Zuko!”

“But—” Zuko spluttered. “You literally just said I needed to—”

Sokka snapped the photo. “That’s great. Just enough on the blurry side. Really feels like it was taken by an overworked DMV employee at 7 AM.”

“Then what the fuck was the smiling for!” Zuko demanded. 

“That’s just special material for Sokka,” Sokka said off hand, busy texting the Mechanist the photo. “Don’t worry about it. Have you picked out a name yet? You have approximately five seconds to answer.”

Zuko looked to the ceiling like it had some kind of cosmic answer for how to deal with Sokka on a daily basis. He let out an aggravated sigh. “I dunno. Lee? Go with Lee.”

Sokka finished off the text with, ‘His pseudo is Lee’. 

After that, there was no more time to fuck around. They needed to vacate the premises, fast, and take all their incriminating evidence with them. Sokka stuffed Zuko’s old clothing in his backpack, most especially the patrol jacket, and there was also the bullet that had previously been inside Zuko, which Sokka tied up in a tissue and threw in with the rest of his clothing. Sokka retrieved Zuko’s boots for him, and Zuko stuffed his cigarettes and lighter into his bright yellow jumper pocket. The only thing left, as far as Sokka could remember, was the illegal painkillers. Sokka made Zuko take a few before he stuffed them back in his bag. 

There were also some basic necessities, if they were going to be camping out at Katara’s apartment for an indefinite amount of time. Toothbrushes, mainly. He also took his laptop, just because he didn’t want any patrolmen breaking it when they searched the apartment. They didn’t tend to be very gentle about it. 

With the purple baseball cap, heart-shaped sunglasses, face mask, and the yellow jumper, Zuko was undeniably a fashion disaster. He didn’t really blend into the shadows, though Sokka was positive that no one would look at the man in the goofy sunglasses and think: “That man’s the X-Soldier, a dangerous fugitive wanted by the Pyrian Empire!” Besides, this was Ba Sing Se, one of the largest cities in the world. Nobody was going to look twice at someone dressed a little oddly. Or so he hoped. 

“Ready to tackle four flights of stairs?” Sokka asked, trying his best to make the words come out positive and encouraging, despite the fact that Sokka did not feel positive nor encouraged. 

“It’ll be fine,” Zuko said, which did exactly nothing to assuage Sokka’s worry. “Don’t you want to put your hair up?”

Sokka reached up and patted his own head, feeling the loose strands of hair around his ears. Zuko took off the hair tie on his wrist and handed it to him, which was oddly considerate. His mind stuttered over the idea that Zuko thought they were friends, now. Sokka tried to float the idea through his mind.

They were friends.

It sounded right. After all, Sokka supposed that there were some things in life you couldn’t go through without becoming friends, and saving a man from a gunshot wound was one of them. 

As Sokka pulled his hair back, he said, “You can lean on me any time, all right? We’re going to be doing a lot of walking, way too much walking. Like, a full hour of walking. Damn, I’m getting depressed just thinking about it.”

Zuko quirked a tiny smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Sokka grabbed his keys, and then the two of them set out. Zuko took each step down the stairs a bit gingerly, but he never wavered. Sokka found himself sneaking glances at him whenever he could, but he never showed any signs of being in pain. Sokka stuck close to him, just in case. 

When they reached the street level, he pulled out his phone and opened up the Mechanist and Sokka’s special little program. He showed the screen to Zuko, showcasing view after view of CCTV footage in the Lower Ring, and said, “Betcha weren’t expecting _this._ ” 

It was a near perfect clone of the program that the patrols used to monitor the streets of Ba Sing Se. 

Zuko merely raised an eyebrow. “So that’s how you were always so good at getting away.”

Great, what better time for a reminder of the fact that Zuko was the sole man responsible for hunting down the Avatar for the past few years?

“There will probably never be a time when that _isn’t_ weird,” Sokka sighed. “And I’ll also have you know that we are also very knowledgeable, coordinated, and talented.” 

“Of course,” Zuko said. “I’d expect nothing less from Pyre’s greatest enemies.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic right now, but if you are, I’m contractually obligated to hit you.”

“I better not be sarcastic, then,” Zuko said with a straight face. 

“I better not hit you, then.”

Sokka couldn’t tell if Zuko was smiling, not with the mask and the sunglasses, though he liked to think that he was. He thought about maybe spending every day like this— not running from the military, exactly, though Sokka didn’t doubt that there would be a lot more of that in his future— but laughing with this strange man he found in the street. 

If Sokka had asked himself a week ago if he’d ever thought that he could get along with the notorious X-Soldier, he never would have expected the result, but the truth was that the X-Soldier wasn’t who his helmet had made him out to be. Sokka admired his drive, his passion, his rough sincerity. He wasn’t the nicest, or the most capable, or even the funniest man around— but he was trying to _be_ something, and Sokka had to respect that. 

He’d fit in nicely with the Avatar— that is, if the Avatar didn’t get him killed first. 

(Because Sokka wasn’t the type to believe in coincidences.)

* * *

They carefully wove through the streets, passing through busy crowds of businessmen and women, some street performers— like a man and a woman playing a ukulele, who Sokka knew for a fact that Aang hung out with from time to time—, a colorful mascot swinging around a sign, some teenagers smoking in an alleyway, and a couple of men dressed in rough jackets and gelled hair, one with a baseball bat, though there weren’t any nails driven into it, so at least they managed to avoid that stereotype. 

They hadn’t encountered any patrols hiding out of view of the street cameras, which Sokka was very thankful for, but, as a consequence, his original projection of one hour of walking was soon shifting into two. 

Whatever color Zuko had regained in his face had long since evaporated. He slowly grew stiffer and stiffer, until they were walking slow enough that the crowds of people actually shot them dirty looks as they walked around them. Sokka didn’t want to say anything about it, because Zuko seemed very prideful about his ability to walk on his own. 

Eventually, though, Zuko had to grab onto Sokka’s arm. It still startled him, making Sokka miss a step, but Sokka very quickly fell back into a rhythm, letting Zuko lean on him. Sokka tried not to think that it was a lot like holding hands, because Zuko looked like he honestly needed the help, and he didn’t want to take advantage of it. But they were nearly hip to hip, and with every step, their shoulders brushed. 

Maybe to distract himself from his no-doubt painful bullet wound, Zuko said, “You know. I’ve been thinking.”

“As a self-proclaimed thinker, I can’t say I recommend it.”

Sokka suspected that Zuko was developing some sort of immunity to him, because he barely acknowledged what he just said. “About my sister,” he clarified. 

Well, there went any chances of this being a light conversation. “Do you have any more big revelations for me?” Sokka asked. “Are we going to be attacked by a fucking blimp? What about an orbital laser strike?”

“No. It’s just. It’s been a very long time since me and Azula got along. I think part of it was that our father always pitted us against each other. Or maybe it was mom’s death. I don’t know. To be honest,” his voice grew into something bitterly humorless, “I don’t think there’s enough time in the world to delve into the shittiness of my upbringing right now. But I always used to think that Azula would shoot me through the heart and feel nothing about it.”

“Wow,” Sokka said, feeling a bit overwhelmed, because that was more about Zuko’s life than he’d gleaned in all the time they’d spent together, and all at once, too. “That’s— something, all right.”

“I’m just thinking that— she didn’t. Shoot me through the heart.” Zuko turned to meet his eyes through the pink tint of the heart-shaped sunglasses, and Sokka realized that they had inadvertently stopped walking. “She had the chance to, Sokka. I knew I couldn’t move away in time. But she shot me here,” Zuko pressed his hand over his bullet wound. “Somewhere non-lethal. She’s the best shot I ever met. She doesn’t miss.”

“Zuko,” Sokka said, “I wouldn’t exactly call your fucking gunshot wound a declaration of _love!”_

“But that’s the thing. You don’t know how Azula works. She had the chance to kill me— she was _ordered_ to kill me— but she didn’t. That has to mean something.”

“C’mon,” Sokka said, shaking the arm that Zuko was holding onto, and they started up walking again. “I don’t know if I’ve got the right to say anything here, but I’ll do it anyways. Just because she spared you the first time doesn’t mean she’ll do it the second.”

“Yeah,” Zuko said quietly. “I know.”

He sounded so sad, at that moment, like he knew that his own life was broken and shitty and irreparable, that Sokka felt he had to say, “Something tells me that you care about her, as fucked up as you make her sound. I’ve got a sister, too, you know, and fuck knows I’ve given up enough shit to make sure she’s safe.”

Sokka felt Zuko’s eyes on him, but he kept his own eyes on the street ahead of him. 

Sokka cleared his throat. “But that’s a conversation for another time. What I mean to say is, I hope you’re right. I want you to be right. And if you aren’t, you’ve got me, at least. You’ve got me and Katara and Aang and Toph. We’ll be your new family.” 

Zuko didn’t say anything to that, but Sokka felt Zuko’s grip on his arm tighten. 

Sokka’s face started to heat. “Ah, not that you’re special or anything. Katara forcefully adopted Aang after knowing him less than a week, so technically I’m also allowed to do it. Once, that is. Everyone’s got their freebie. Before you ask, Aang used his freebie on Toph.”

Sokka glanced down at his phone to keep himself from rambling anymore, only to be pleasantly surprised. “Oh, fucking finally,” he sighed. “We’re nearly at Katara’s building.” All they had to do was cross the street and walk down the block. 

Zuko suddenly stopped in place. 

There were only a couple other people out on the sidewalk, since it was pretty far off from the main thoroughfare. An old lady carrying bags of groceries. A middle-aged man walking his dog. A young woman in a pantsuit and dark sunglasses, leaning casually against a pedestrian traffic light, on the other side of the crosswalk. 

Sokka got the feeling that the young woman was watching them, though her eyes were untraceable. 

“Uh, Zuko?” Sokka murmured. 

His eyes flicked back to the woman on the other side of the crosswalk, and Sokka watched, bemused, as she slowly removed the sunglasses and folded them up. She slid them into her pocket. 

Then she covered her left eye with a perfectly manicured hand. Her nails were bright red. She was smiling. 

Sokka tugged on Zuko’s arm. “Hey, what’s the hold up, here?” 

“Fuck,” Zuko rasped. “She’s going to pull out a gun.”

The woman calmly removed her hand from her face and settled it into her purse, a black, cross-body bag. She pulled out a glock and aimed it not at Sokka, and not at Zuko, but at the old lady carrying her bags of groceries down the street. The old woman had her back to the lady with the gun, and couldn’t know what was happening. 

The lady with the gun gestured with her free hand. _Come here._

“I’m guessing,” Sokka said, feeling himself break out into a cold sweat, “that this might be your sister.”

“I think we should cross the street,” Zuko said. 

“Yeah,” Sokka wheezed, “No kidding.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sokka: *starts stripping*
> 
> Zuko: *thoughts.exe has stopped working*


	8. guns & garrotes

Crossing the street had never been so stressful in Sokka’s entire life. 

Zuko’s sister looked like a horrible mix between a CEO and an international hitman. Her lipstick was bright red and seamless, and her smile was cold and tight-lipped. The worst part was that Sokka could clearly see the resemblance between her and Zuko. Her eyes looked like his, but if Zuko’s drive and tinge of sadness was sucked out and replaced with something blank and unplaceable.

“So nice of you to join me,” Azula said, her arm unerringly steady as she continued to point her glock at the old woman to her left. “I was beginning to feel left out.”

Zuko had long since let go of Sokka’s arm when they made their dreaded way across the street. When they finally stopped a couple feet in front of her, Zuko looked like he was grinding his teeth to the bone, and when he spoke, it came out in a near-growl. “Azula. Put the gun down.”

Azula tutted. “Now what kind of attitude is this? Put the gun down? But we’re just getting started.”

“How did you find me?” Zuko demanded. 

“Hey,” Sokka blurted, holding out his hands, his eyes jutting from Azula’s gun to the innocent bystander, to the cars flashing behind them, to the sound of a taxi honking on a street two blocks down, to the man across the way walking his dog. “Can we take this _literally_ anywhere else but the middle of the street?”

When Azula’s attention landed on him, Sokka felt it, like some kind of physical force. He was uncomfortably reminded of a scene from that dinosaur movie where the velociraptor peers through the kitchen door. 

“You must be Sokka,” she said, which chilled Sokka to the bone. She cocked her head. “I’m not sure that you’re aware of exactly what type of encounter this is, _Sokka._ ”

“No, I’m fully aware,” Sokka said nervously. “And I don’t see why this needs to involve anyone else but us.”

Azula smirked. “So you’d rather have me shoot my brother in a dark alleyway. Can’t give you points for taste.”

“Sokka’s right,” Zuko said darkly. “This is between us. Point the gun at me or no one at all.”

“Zuzu!” Azula exclaimed, finally dragging the glock away from the innocent woman and using it to tap coyly against her cheek. “Look at you, finally growing a backbone. I thought I’d never see the day. We’ve treated you like a punching bag long enough that I thought you’d die like a dog.”

Zuko flinched, a mere twitch of his head. 

“But, you know what?” Azula continued. “I’m feeling charitable. Let’s go over to a dark alleyway. I won’t even make you get down on your knees. How about that?”

Zuko and Sokka exchanged a quick, nervous look. 

“Are you thinking about running?” Azula asked teasingly. She looked, for all intents and purposes, completely unbothered by the prospect. 

Zuko squared his shoulders and tore his gaze away from Sokka. “No. Let’s go.”

Sokka felt like he didn’t really have any say in this as he helplessly followed after Zuko and Azula to the alleyway behind Katara’s building. But Sokka had fucking asked for this, hadn’t he?

Holy shit, if Sokka didn’t do something soon Zuko’s sister was going to execute the guy he’d just forcefully adopted (and had a maybe-crush on) right before his fucking eyes. 

There wasn’t much in the alleyway besides an overflowing dumpster, a few stray beer cans, and a plastic bag. The alley had a bend in it, and to their left was a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, and to their right was the alleyway that led back to the street. Above their heads, two stories up, someone had hung a clothesline. 

“Now isn’t this quaint,” Azula said. “Won’t even be able to toss your corpse into the dumpster.”

Sokka came to the uncomfortable realization that Azula hadn’t really needed to move to an alleyway at all. She could have shot anyone on the street in broad daylight and no one would have done a thing about it. She _was_ the government. She _was_ the law. 

“How did you find me, Azula?” Zuko asked tightly. He pulled his face mask off and stuffed it into his pocket. He folded up the heart-shaped sunglasses and tucked it onto the jumper’s collar. 

“Really, now, Zuzu,” she said, taking a few steps to face them. It reminded Sokka of a shark circling a surfboard. “You can’t figure it out? It was you, after all, that led me right to it.”

Zuko’s fists were clenched at his sides. “That’s not true. You’re lying.”

“Why lie when the truth is so much worse?”

Sokka grew an uneasy feeling in his stomach, like he was about to throw up. He tried to keep his eyes locked on the lady with the gun, but he wanted to look at Zuko very badly. (No, Zuko couldn’t have— could he?)

“I pity you, Sokka,” Azula simpered. “I can’t imagine what he said to you to get you to trust him, but look where you ended up. Led straight to the slaughter. I thought members of the Avatar were supposed to be smarter than this.”

Sokka’s heart was near ready to beat out his chest. “I know Zuko didn’t rat us out. He never had a chance to. So you can stop trying to divide and conquer, thank you very much.”

Azula let out a cold little laugh. “Your faith in him is astounding. Why— I bet you don’t even know who he is.”

“Azula—” Zuko blurted. 

She laughed. “I’m _right_ , aren’t I?” 

“The inspection was a diversion,” Zuko said sternly. “You wanted to draw me out of the apartment.”

Sokka’s mind raced. That made sense, in a weird, twisted kind of way. If someone had tipped off the patrol that Zuko was in a certain building, or maybe even staying with Sokka, as much as he dreaded to think of it, then it wouldn’t be that bad of an assumption to think that Sokka would take Zuko somewhere else, and he only had one family member on record in Ba Sing Se. 

And then, _snap._ The trap would close around them. 

“I’m growing tired of this,” Azula sighed, and finally pointed her gun— not at Zuko, but at Sokka. 

Sokka felt himself let out an unflattering squawk. 

Zuko grew impossibly tenser.

“You know,” Azula started, and, for the first time since Sokka had heard her speak, her words had a small waver to them. “Dad was pretty upset with me.”

Zuko started edging his foot slightly in front of Sokka’s foot. Sokka mentally cursed at him. 

“Was he?” Zuko said, his words hard. 

Anger, for the first time, drifted into Azula’s expression. “He’s not supposed to be upset with me. I’m the good one. I’m not the fuckup.”

“I’m sorry,” Zuko said, which surprised Sokka enough to make him whip his head around to catch Zuko’s face in profile, the burn scar in shadowed relief. 

“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” Azula said darkly, and turned the gun onto Zuko. 

Zuko held both his hands up. “Azula. Stop. Think about what you’re doing.”

“I’m always thinking about what I’m doing. This, I’ve decided, is a mistake I need to correct.”

“Then stop thinking!” Zuko snarled, which was something that Sokka knew for a fact he’d never have to the guts to yell at a person five seconds away from killing him. “You’ve already let me go. There’s nothing stopping you from doing it again.”

“You think it’s that easy,” Azula said, scorn dripping from her mouth. “You betrayed us. You betrayed your family. There’s nothing that can forgive that.”

“Azula!” Zuko yelled and took a bold step forward. Azula tightened her grip on the gun. “You don’t want to kill me!”

She narrowed her eyes. “How do you know what I want?”

Zuko took another step forward. “I know you.”

“You know nothing,” she spat. “Take another step forward and your _friend_ is getting a hole in his chest.”

Zuko stopped in place. 

Sokka nervously raised his hands. He wished he had something to throw, some kind of weapon, but all he had was a backpack full of incriminating evidence. What was his life coming to? 

“Azula, please,” Zuko said, soft enough that Sokka had trouble hearing it. “Let me go. You don’t need to do this.”

“If I don’t do this,” she ground out. “What will he think of me? Do you think _he_ had any problems taking out _Mom?_ ”

Zuko flinched, and Sokka took a half-step forward. Azula didn’t seem to notice it.

“What about Mom, then?” Zuko asked, his voice rough. 

Sokka shuffled forward again. 

There was a tense, heavy silence in the alleyway. 

Azula fired at the same time that Zuko leaped forward. 

The shot ricocheted against the red brick of Katara’s building, and Zuko wrapped his arms around his homicidal sister, pressing her forehead against his shoulder, hugging her tightly to his chest. Her arms were both out-splayed, the large pistol still outstretched to her side. Amazingly, she didn’t kick him. She didn’t move at all. 

Slowly, Sokka watched as she lowered the gun to her side. Sokka was afraid that if he moved at all, he would break the moment, and she’d raise it again. He barely trusted himself to breathe. 

The first sound he heard was Azula’s quiet laughter. It soon grew in volume into something loud and hard-edged. 

“You truly are my brother,” she said, in much the same way a person would condemn a hanged man. 

“Truce,” Zuko said gruffly.

Azula let out another burst of laughter. “ _Truce._ ” It wasn’t kindly said. It was coughed out, filled with bitter sarcasm. Sokka didn’t trust it for a second, but apparently Zuko did, because he withdrew his arms back to his sides. 

And that’s when Sokka noticed, clenched tightly in Zuko’s white-knuckled hand, the pocket knife. 

Sokka’s mind reeled. 

Azula calmly brushed off her black suit jacket like nothing had happened at all. Like Zuko hadn’t been about to sink that three-inch knife into the tender flesh of her back. 

“Tell him that you killed me,” Zuko said. “Or tell him that I left the city.” 

“But you’re not going to leave the city,” Azula said. She adjusted her cufflink. “Stay here and you’ll still be my problem.”

“The Avatar will be your problem.”

“And I’m going to deal with them,” she said. “And all your dearest new friends.” She didn’t look at Sokka when she said it, though Sokka had half-expected her to. 

“All I’m asking,” Zuko said, with a weary weight to his shoulders, “is that you let me go.”

“Fine,” Azula said curtly. Sokka watched, almost unbelievably, as she tucked her pistol back into her bag. “But I won’t hesitate to kill you the second he realizes that you’re still alive.”

“I’ll try not to make it easy,” Zuko said.

Azula abruptly turned on her heel. She made eye contact with Sokka and smirked at him, which nearly caused him to take a wary step back, but all she did was take a few measured steps towards the alleyway that led back to the brightly lit street. 

“If we’re lucky,” Azula called out over her shoulder, “We’ll never see each other again.” 

“But we’re not lucky,” Zuko sighed. 

Azula finally turned the bend and vanished from view. 

Sokka felt like he was holding his breath, and now, even when the threat had disappeared, and he’d done all of jack shit, he still couldn’t let it out. He was clenching his jaw so tight that he thought he’d cracked some enamel. 

Sokka only managed to snap out of it when Zuko collapsed onto his knees. 

Half his brain screamed at Sokka to run to him, but the more logical side won out and Sokka jogged after Azula, peeking around the bend. Empty. She really was gone. The knowledge didn’t help him relax any, and he finally rushed over to Zuko, crouching in front of him and grabbing him by the shoulders. 

“Hey,” Sokka said, searching Zuko’s face. 

“Hey,” Zuko said right back, trying for a smile. 

The attempt made Sokka try for a smile, too. 

“Let’s lean you against the wall, all right?” Sokka murmured. Zuko didn’t resist as Sokka helped him shuffle a few feet over to the brick wall of Katara’s building. Zuko slumped against it, his baseball cap knocking against the brick. Sokka hesitated, and then he slumped down right next to him in that dirty alleyway. Zuko turned his head to keep looking at him. 

“Guess you really were hiding a knife, huh?” Sokka said, because of all the things to say, that was the only thing he could come up with. 

“It was in my boot.”

Of course it was, Sokka thought. Damn, he should have thought of that. “Not your ass?”

The joke didn’t land right. Zuko twisted his mouth into a tiny frown, his brows scrunched up in what could only be intense worry. “I’m sorry.”

Sokka felt deeply shaken, and he wasn’t sure if his legs would hold him, if he tried to stand, but he still needed to brush this off. “Hey, what’s another gun thrown in my face? It must be a Tuesday.”

“It’s Wednesday.”

“Zuko, don’t be obnoxious. That’s _my_ job.”

Sokka watched as Zuko’s irises flickered, searching Sokka’s face. “What did I do to deserve you?” It could have easily come off as some kind of barb, another biting spike of sarcasm. But the thing was— it didn’t. It had the same hushed sincerity of those words all those days ago— _I promise you—_ a soft, questioning whisper. 

Sokka found himself momentarily stunned. 

Zuko’s eyes drew down, just for a moment, and Sokka could have sworn he was looking at Sokka’s lips. 

Their shoulders were pressed tightly together. The alleyway smelled horribly like garbage. Zuko still had his pocket knife in his hand. He was still wearing that stupid purple baseball cap. 

“I was afraid that—” Zuko said, the words soft between them, “—that she was going to shoot you in front of me. And make me watch.”

“Psh,” Sokka scoffed, but there wasn’t much spirit behind it. He found himself leaning into Zuko’s space, inexorably drawn into the warmth of the other man’s breath. “You don’t think I could dodge a bullet or two?”

“My bad,” Zuko said, and finally leaned forward and breached the scant space between them, in one single, determined movement. His lips slid against Sokka’s mouth, and Sokka felt the brim of Zuko’s stupid baseball cap hit the top of his head and fall to the dirty pavement, and if Sokka wasn’t already so shaken, he knew his heart would have probably exploded, but as it stood all he did was let out a small, surprised gasp into Zuko’s mouth, and reach up and slide his hand into Zuko’s hair. 

It wasn’t very long or very deep, but it was kind of sweet, a gentle caress of his lips, and somewhere along the line Zuko had cradled his free hand along Sokka’s jaw. His thumb drew a line along Sokka’s stubbled cheek. Neither of them had shaved that morning. 

All too soon, Zuko pulled away, but he didn’t take away his hand. Not for a moment, and then he dragged it to his chest, in a jerky, disjointed tug. Sokka found himself sliding his own hand out of Zuko’s hair and down to the joint between Zuko’s neck and shoulder, dazedly, hardly aware of what he was doing. 

“Hey,” Zuko said, his voice deep and husky, which nearly made Sokka drag him in again, but he didn’t have that much control over his faculties just yet. “Uh. Yeah.”

“Uh,” Sokka said. 

“Sorry, I, uh,” Zuko gestured vaguely between them. “Sorry, but I think. Uh. I broke my stitches. Again.”

Sokka felt himself blink and crash down into reality with all the power of a skydiver with no parachute. He lifted his hand off Zuko’s shoulder as if stung by a bee, and instead used it to press against Zuko’s forehead. Because Zuko was blushing, but was that really only because—?

Oh god, he felt warm. But was that only because—?

Sokka reached down and tugged up Zuko’s jumper and shirt. Zuko let out a weird squeak, but Sokka ignored that, because there was blood seeping through his bandages.

“Shitfuck,” Sokka hissed. “Fucking goddamn motherfucker.”

“Sokka,” Zuko started to say, but he never finished the thought. 

Sokka pressed his hand over the bullet wound, as if that would do anything, and Zuko winced. The warm stickiness of Zuko’s blood pressed into Sokka’s palm, and damn— it almost felt normal, at this point. 

“You can’t keep doing this,” Sokka said, stressing every word. 

Zuko, at least, had the wherewithal to look guilty, though Sokka knew it hadn’t been his fault that his homicidal sister had hunted them down and tried to kill them. What a fucking mess that sentence was. 

“We need to get you to Katara _yesterday_. And don’t even try to complain about it.”

“Okay,” Zuko said, without even a pretense of a complaint, and that’s how Sokka knew that it was bad. 

Standing up was a challenge, but with Sokka’s arm thrown around Zuko’s waist, they both managed it. Sokka tried to hide how shaky he was himself, but in the end, it seemed less like Sokka was supporting Zuko and more like they were two battered punching bags held up by pressing heavily against each other. 

“Not gonna pass out on me?” Sokka grunted as they emerged out into the light of the street. It was nice to get away from the cloying scent of the dumpster. As Sokka had expected, the street was completely empty. People in this part of town knew better than to stay around after a gunshot had gone off. 

Zuko didn’t respond beyond a vague, “Hngh.”

Sokka settled Zuko wearily down on the stoop to Katara’s apartment building. With heavy steps, Sokka went over and pressed on Katara’s doorbell. He checked his phone for the time, and his brain tickled him with some far off information, but he couldn’t immediately place what it was. 

When Katara didn’t answer, not even after five minutes, it finally clicked. 

Sokka sank down on the stoop next to Zuko with a sigh. 

Zuko, in the meantime, had taken to leaning his head against the railing. His eyes were closed, but he flicked them open again. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m an idiot,” Sokka said. “But I think we already knew that.”

It seemed to take a lot of effort out of him, but Zuko picked his head off the railing. “No, you’re not.”

Sokka unlocked his phone. “Yeah, you say that now, buddy boy, but wait until you hear _this_ conversation.” He clicked her name, waiting with barely concealed panic for it to ring. 

When Katara picked up, she said something rather normal and benign like, “Hello?” and Sokka started off with:

“Dearest and most capable sister of mine, who is now most probably at her job like a normal, regular human being—”

“—Sokka,” her voice told Sokka that she already knew what Sokka was going to say and she already didn’t like it. “Can’t we go a single day without another _crisis?_ ”

Sokka sighed. “I was going to use the term hypothetical scenario.”

He explained the situation in the most barebones manner possible (couldn’t really trust phone lines these days), but Katara quickly got the memo that Sokka and the Guy were now stranded on her stoop, and that the Guy had about one foot in death’s door. Sokka didn’t think it was _that_ bad, but Katara was quick to correct him, because she had money on the fact that Zuko’s injury had gotten infected. That was her creepy doctor powers talking. 

In any case, Katara wouldn’t be back at her apartment for another thirty minutes. Sokka told as much to Zuko, who said, “To be fair, I hadn’t thought about texting her beforehand either.”

“I guess we’re both a bunch of dunderheads, eh? A real pair of buffoons.”

“Couple of dumbasses,” Zuko said. 

“Some real Princes of Stupidtown over here.”

Zuko let out a snort, and it was unflattering and goofy, and it made Sokka remember, with startling clarity, that they’d _kissed_ on the ground of a dirty alleyway that smelled like trash, high on adrenaline and fear, and Sokka wondered if that was something they could do again, maybe. Possibly. Right now, even. When they weren’t assaulted by the ambient scent of pure dumpster. 

“Uh, Zuko, hey,” Sokka started, but then he saw that Zuko was pressing his hand against his gunshot wound, just like he’d done back when Sokka had found him in the street, and he couldn’t bring himself to complete the thought. “Does it hurt?”

Zuko made a non-committal noise. 

“Don’t pass out on me, okay?” Sokka said. He hesitated for a moment, but then he carefully wrapped his arm around Zuko’s shoulders, tugging him against Sokka’s chest. “Gotta be better than the railing, right?” He felt his face grow hot. 

Zuko rested his head against Sokka’s shoulder and it was close to the best thing that Sokka’s ever had happen in his entire life. Well, he supposed that kissing Zuko had to take a higher position on that list, though Sokka had to stress that it _had_ smelled pretty awful in that alleyway. 

He supposed that they’d be stuck there, for a little while. And there were certain things that Sokka had been stewing about—besides kissing boys, that was. He guessed that the most important question was, “Azula seemed to think that you did something to let her find us.”

Sokka hadn’t entirely meant for it to come out of his mouth, but there it was, lingering in the air. Couldn’t take it back now.

He felt Zuko stiffen at his side. “Yeah,” he dragged out. 

Sokka tried not to sound too accusing when he asked, “Any ideas about… why?”

“I don’t know what she meant, exactly.” He sounded frustrated by it. “She might have been talking about this… list. It wasn’t anything official, but she could have taken it out of my files.”

“A list?”

“A list of people I suspected were in the Avatar.”

“And I’m on it?” Sokka asked, feeling equal parts trepidation and pride. “I thought you didn’t remember me?”

“I didn’t,” Zuko hedged. “But I might have remembered. Um. Katara.”

“You _what?”_ Sokka snapped. “Katara’s on this list but not _me?”_

“No, you should be on it. I usually included family members.”

“I’m a _family member,”_ Sokka lamented, reaching up with his free hand to cover his face. “Thanks for that.”

Sokka felt Zuko shift, like he was about to pull away, so Sokka quickly said, “It’s fine. I’m joking.”

Zuko remained in place, though he was still tense. Sokka gently squeezed his shoulder and said, “Your sister must have thought that I didn't know you were the X-Soldier.”

“Uh, what?” Zuko said, sounding like he’d been honestly caught off-guard. 

“She said some stuff about me not knowing who you were? Honestly, it’d be a pretty good move to pull if I hadn’t already known. It’s like she knows exactly where to sink in the knife.” Sokka cringed. “Bad phrasing.”

Zuko didn’t immediately say anything, but Sokka didn’t blame him. He’d probably made the guy uncomfortable by bringing up the fact that he’d been about to shank his own sister. 

Fuck, what a sentence that was. 

“Would you have done it?” Sokka blurted out, and then cringed again. He couldn’t help it. He wanted to know. “Would you have, if she’d, you know.”

Zuko’s voice was fairly quiet, but Sokka supposed you had to be, talking about something like that. “If she’d tried to shoot you, then— yeah. Yeah I think I would have.”

The knowledge of that sank like a brick in Sokka’s stomach. 

Sokka’s mouth was dry. He coughed weakly into his elbow. “Well, glad it didn’t turn out that way. And sorry that I wasn’t much help, back there.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Zuko said, sounding mostly tired. 

Sokka was absolutely going to worry about it, but Zuko didn’t need to know about that part. 

They once again lapsed into silence, but for Sokka, it was loud with his own churning thoughts. He chewed on his lip and took a few sneaking glances down at Zuko’s head. Sokka realized that they’d forgotten his baseball cap in the alleyway. It was pretty tacky anyways, and didn’t match most of his wardrobe. Not a big loss. 

The question was already out of Sokka’s mouth. “Zuko, can I ask you a personal question?”

“What,” he huffed, a little amusement sneaking into his tone. “You decide to preface it this time?”

Sokka was very far from being amused. “I just want you to know that you don’t have to answer it.”

“All right,” he intoned, all traces of his previous joking tone gone. 

“Did your dad ever hit you?”

Zuko froze up, much like Sokka had been expecting. He slowly drew his head off Sokka’s shoulder, though he didn’t push away Sokka’s arm. Zuko met Sokka’s eyes, briefly, before he looked down at the sidewalk, and all Sokka could see was the unmarred side of his face. 

“What made you—” Zuko started, though his voice came out too rough. 

“Azula mentioned something about your dad being, um. Upset. And,” Sokka suddenly remembered, “he’s the one who ordered the hit on you. So, I was just. Curious.”

“He’s never hurt Azula,” Zuko said with finality, and that basically answered Sokka’s question, now hadn’t it? Sokka’s chest hurt. He almost wished he hadn’t asked it at all. 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Sokka said. 

Zuko didn’t look up from the sidewalk. “Just once. And it was a long time ago.”

“I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

“It’s all right. You— after what you just saw— it’s all right. I mean,” Zuko turned to give him a tiny, wry smile. “I think I’ve already told you that there’s no therapist strong enough to deal with my particular brand of childhood issues.”

“Well,” Sokka said, his own mouth curling into a smile. “You know what they say.”

Zuko raised a dubious eyebrow. 

“You know, uh,” Sokka floundered, desperately trying to think of something to lighten the mood. 

Zuko looked at him expectantly. 

“Uh,” Sokka scratched at the back of his neck. “Big feet?”

Zuko wrinkled his nose and tilted his head, as if looking at Sokka from another angle would make everything suddenly clearer. It would have been unbearably cute if Zuko wasn’t doing it because he thought Sokka was utterly insane. 

Sokka covered his eyes with his hand and sighed, “Never mind.”

A car horn went off and Sokka nearly leaped out of his skin. It was a familiar sleek black sedan, loitering in the middle of the street right in front of them. As Sokka watched, the passenger’s side window rolled down, and out popped Toph’s smug-looking face. 

“Get in, losers,” she hollered. “We’re going to the hospital.”

Sokka scratched at his forehead. “How did she know that—?”

The rear passenger window rolled down, and there was Aang, dangling his arm out the window, wearing an orange beanie. “Yikes. You guys look horrible. Want some gum?”

Distantly, there came Katara’s voice from the other side of Aang, “Both of you get in here already _or so help me_ — !”

“Would you look at that,” Sokka said like a weight had just lifted off his heart. “The gang’s all here.”


	9. hospitals & hiraeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 6/15/20: Changed the name of Zuko's cigarette brand to 'Lucky Star.' This has no effect on the story beyond the fact that I have poor planning.

The situation was this: there weren’t enough seats in Toph’s car. 

There was Toph’s driver, Yu, a sour-looking man with a dripping mustache, and then there was Toph in the front passenger seat. In the back, sitting daintily like a lord among men, was Toph’s dog Badger, and next to her was Katara and Aang. To shove two new fairly large men into the mix was going to be a challenge. 

With Badger shoved up onto Toph’s lap, they were one seat closer to not holding up the street traffic anymore. 

“Why, Katara, dear sister,” Sokka said innocently enough, “I think someone’s going to need to sit in someone’s lap. Aang, thank you for volunteering.”

Aang blinked guilelessly, as Sokka had known he would, and said brightly, “Sure thing.”

Katara narrowed her eyes. “But Sokka, dear brother—”

But what Katara didn’t know is that he already had a defense lined up. He smiled the smile of a hunter whose prey had fallen into his trap. “Zuko’s injured—” Sokka made a good show of showing sympathy for Zuko’s plight. Zuko looked like he wasn’t really buying it but Sokka ignored that part. “He’s going to need the full seat. And you’re the smallest person here. Besides Toph.” 

“Don’t you even dare,” Toph grumbled. 

Katara glared at Sokka in a way that meant, _You are dead to me._ To Aang, she smiled awkwardly, and ground out, “It’s only a short trip.”

“It’s—” Was Aang blushing? Hard to tell. “It’s no problem, Katara. What are friends for?”

And so Sokka sandwiched himself in the middle seat between Zuko and Aang. He gave Zuko the bigger seat because, yeah, the guy _was_ the one who was kinda dying. Supposedly. 

Yu finally took off down the street with the screech of squealing tires. 

“So,” Toph said, half-turned around in her seat, not really bothering to make it look like she was actually looking at them. “Is anyone gonna bring up the fact that Smokes might be shot the second he steps foot in the damn door? That’s kinda how we got into this situation in the first place.”

“I should be taken off the list of wanted fugitives.” Zuko’s voice was surprisingly steady, considering what was now definitely a fever coloring his cheeks. 

“Oh,” Aang exclaimed, and awkwardly reached around Katara to pull something out of his pockets. “I’ve got your papers! I was nearly at Katara’s already when Toph picked me up.”

“The Mechanist sent _you?_ ” Sokka said. If Yu wasn’t a member of the Avatar, Sokka might not have said the following sentence. “You’re literally the most high-profile criminal in the goddamn city, Aang!”

“Yeah, but,” Aang waggled his eyebrows, “I’m fast.”

Sokka and Toph barked out a laugh. Katara let out a vaguely pained sigh. 

“I think with the fake ID,” Katara said, “He should be able to get treated. But I don’t get why you were taken off the list of wanted fugitives.”

Zuko sagged slightly against Sokka’s shoulder. 

“I’ll explain everything later,” Sokka promised. “Let’s just get to the hospital, all right?”

The rest of the trip was smooth sailing. Or rocky sailing, since they were packed inside that car like rows of sardines. They needed to get a van or something. At one point, Sokka could have sworn that Zuko passed out, though he was a little too busy to notice it right away.

That was because he and Katara were engaged in high stakes nonverbal sibling warfare. That meant, of course, that Katara and Sokka made a series of faces at each other, that, should they be translated into language, looked like this:

 _What are friends for?_ Sokka mocked. _Aang is such a good_ friend, _isn’t he?_

 _You and Zuko sure are getting along_ great, Katara said right back. _You’re practically attached at the hip. Don’t tell me that you’ve actually made a_ move _, now have you?_

_Maybe I have. Not that you’d know how._

_That was fucking low._

_You should be thanking me._

_I’ll be thanking you by shoving you out a window._

“It’s too quiet back there!” Toph barked. “What are you idiots doing?”

“Sokka and Katara are making faces at each other,” Aang said. “Oh, and I think Zuko passed out.”

That was when Sokka noticed that, yes, the head leaning on his shoulder was Zuko’s, and, yes, his eyes were closed. 

“Well, shit,” Sokka said. 

They couldn’t have arrived at the hospital too soon. It was Katara’s hospital in the Middle Ring, and they’d passed through about three different tolls to get there. Driving around, these days, was very expensive, and that was why Toph was the only one who did it regularly. And legally. 

(All of Aang’s IDs were fake.)

Sokka left his backpack of suspicious goods in the car. Yu informed them, dourly, that he was going to find a parking space. The four of them, plus the unconscious man clutched in Sokka’s arms, plus a vicious seeing-eye dog, watched the car peel off into the parking lot. And one of them was only watching metaphorically. 

“Are we going in with a plan here or just winging it?” Sokka asked. 

* * *

The nurse in green scrubs looked up through the glass partition. “And you are all related?” she asked, adjusting her glasses. “Hi there, Katara.”

“Hey, Minju,” Katara greeted, a bit awkwardly. “You know my brother, Sokka?”

The nurse gave Sokka a strained smile. 

“And this is my cousin, uh, Bumi,” Katara continued, gesturing to Aang. Aang waved. “And this is my other cousin, uh. Fon.” Toph wrinkled her nose. Katara was beginning to lose steam, at this point. “And my other, _other_ cousin, Lee. He’s got a high fever from an infected wound. That’s why we’re here, actually.”

“And also why you left in such a hurry?” Minju asked. 

“Exactly,” Katara said, in a strained tone. 

Minju gave their group a slightly dubious look, but said, nonetheless, “Let’s get the patient on a stretcher. I’ll have you fill out some paperwork as well. Another nurse will come in to ask you some questions.”

“No problem,” Katara said, bowing slightly. “Thank you.”

A couple of nurses came out to usher Zuko away to an examination room, and the four of them and Badger hurried behind the stretcher like an unruly herd of geese. The nurses put him in a room with two other people, separated by a blue curtain. Zuko got the far corner cot, and there was only one other chair in the vicinity. 

Sokka quickly monopolized it. He crossed his legs and started filling out Zuko’s haphazard paperwork on a clipboard. He put nobody down as ‘Next of Kin,’ just because things could get dicey and he didn’t want anyone to be traced back to this alias. 

It was pretty obvious that there were too many people in that small space, but Sokka was often of the opinion that things were fine until someone yelled at you for it. 

“Do you think that lady bought it?” Toph asked, crossing her arms, a tiny smirk marring her face. “I mean, I can’t see why not. Don’t we all look exactly alike?”

Aang snickered. 

Katara blustered, “We could be cousins by marriage, or something. Adoption exists.”

“It’s _totally_ plausible,” Sokka said. “Absolutely impeccable thinking on the move, there, Katara, really.”

Katara whacked him on the back of the head. 

“Hey!” Sokka said. “You made me misspell _stairs!_ ”

“Why are you spelling _stairs?”_ Katara hissed. 

“Because I’m writing that he fell down the stairs onto like, a metal spike.”

Katara looked like she was near having a stroke. “A metal _spike?_ A _metal spike?_ ”

Sokka slapped the clipboard onto his knees. “Well I can’t exactly say that he got—” he whispered the word, “— _shot_ — in a hospital without them calling you-know-who, now can I?”

“This is the most obvious wound on the planet,” Katara said. “Doctors here have dealt with so many of them that they can identify them in their sleep.”

“What if we say that he was into BDSM?” Toph offered, stroking her chin. 

“That might work actually,” Aang chipped in. 

“No!” Katara erupted. “That’s not going to work!”

“I’m already writing it down,” Sokka said. 

Katara confiscated the clipboard from him. 

It was at this point that someone finally came in and yelled at them. It was yet another nurse, here to hook up Zuko’s IV. They were all kicked into the waiting room and told that they would have to wait, hence the name of the room, and to hand the paperwork and Zuko’s ID to the clerk at the desk. 

Katara finished filling out the paperwork out with an angry, huffy pout, sitting next to Aang and across from Sokka and Toph in cheap, white plastic chairs. 

When she got up to turn the paperwork in, Toph elbowed Sokka in the side and whispered, “What’s got her panties in a bunch?”

“A bunch of things,” Sokka said tiredly out of the corner of his mouth. “Me. Aang. Zuko, probably. I think you’ve managed to escape unscathed, somehow. You better not make any more comments if you want to keep up the streak.”

“I’m disappointed in myself,” Toph sighed. “I thought I was better than this.”

“Hey, don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll be happy to be mad at you any second now.”

“It just doesn’t feel the same. If it’s not authentic, then what’s the _point?”_

Sokka made a sympathetic noise. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Katara returned from speaking with the clerk and collapsed onto her waiting room plastic chair. “Sokka, would you _please_ start explaining what’s going on?”

Sokka leaned forward and clasped his hands in front of him, signaling that business was going to be going down. Aang copied him, and even Katara leaned forward a bit. “All right, team, huddle up. I’ll start by saying that we’ve got a rat in our midst.”

Aang’s eyes widened. “Wait. You mean in—”

“I mean in _that_ midst. Someone ratted me out to the patrol.”

A tangible, shocked silence. 

“There’s no other explanation for it,” Sokka said. “The person who was after the Guy said someone tipped her off. She knew that he was in _my_ building, just a few days after you announced our new ally to the whole group.”

Aang looked stricken. 

“Fuck,” Toph said. 

“There’s fucking children in here,” Katara hissed. “Don’t curse.”

“Fudge,” Toph said. 

Aang rubbed his forehead. “This is my fault.”

“It’s not,” Katara said firmly, resting a hand on his shoulder. “You can’t keep taking the blame for every bad thing that happens.” She turned to Sokka. “We already knew that a lot of people hated him. If they thought that there was a way of getting rid of him, then I can see a lot of people doing exactly that.”

“I shouldn’t have told everyone,” Aang said. “It was too soon. They weren’t ready to accept him.”

Sokka silently agreed. But now wasn’t the time to curse out his best friend. “But it all worked out for the better. Think about it. Not only did we get the Guy’s pursuer to lay off, but we also blew open a possible traitor. If we can pinpoint who did it, then we might have prevented some other future catastrophe.”

“What pursuer?” Katara asked. “What are you talking about?”

Sokka explained, as best as he could, about Zuko’s sister, without using Zuko or his sister’s name. He had to explain that Azula was the one who had shot Zuko, and that Zuko’s father had ordered the shot. He didn’t go into too much detail about the actual held-at-gunpoint encounter, simply saying that Zuko’s sister had found them, threatened them, but was convinced to let them go, maybe even out of some warped version of familial love. 

“So this lady,” Toph said quietly, “is the actual motherflipping governor?”

“I don’t know why he’d lie about something like that,” Sokka said, throwing up his hands. “It’s too crazy to not be true.”

“Yeah, but what I don’t get,” Toph hummed, “Is if this lady’s the governor, then who the hell is giving _her_ orders?”

Sokka blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You said she got orders to pop Smokes a new butthole.” 

Sokka winced. “Please do not utter those words from your mouth. And that was from her dad.”

“Then who’s daddy?” Toph asked. 

The question seemed to reverberate through Sokka’s mind. His silence must have told enough of a story. He didn’t know. Was that important? Was the identity of Zuko’s father important? Sokka was beginning to suspect that it might be.

Aang clapped his hands together. “There’s not much we can do right now, sitting here, but we can try to find the traitor. And knowing who’s actually pulling the strings is going to help us along the line, I know it is. This might be just the thing we need to finally make a difference in this city.”

Sokka shook his head. “Yeah. Of course.”

Katara smiled and nodded. 

Toph pounded her fist into her other hand. “Fudge yeah.” She paused, and then said, offhand. “I bet it was Haru.”

“Whoa,” Aang said. “Let’s not randomly point fingers at anyone, all right? We need to be careful about this.”

“I bet it was _Jet_ ,” Katara said.

“Katara,” Aang exclaimed, like he was just brutally betrayed. 

"I bet it was Jet, too,” Sokka said. 

“Guys!” Aang whined. 

* * *

As fate would have it, Zuko woke up in the afternoon. He still looked flushed and wan, but the doctor— the very suspicious doctor— assured Sokka that he was rapidly improving. His list of ailments wasn’t very long. Some malnutrition, some dehydration. A cocktail of chemicals in his blood, including tramadol and nicotine. Bacterial infection. A gaping hole in his gut. 

The doctor was a man with a full head of greying hair and a sun-worn face. When he finished giving Sokka the update on Zuko’s condition, he slid his clipboard into the nook of his white-coated elbow. 

“You realize, young man,” the doctor said to him, and it was only Sokka in the hospital room with Zuko— they wouldn’t let anyone else in. Something about too many people getting in the way. “That I’m going to have to call this one in.”

Sokka winced. “Yeah, I thought you might say that. I can’t see why, though.”

“I think you see why,” the doctor said with finality. “I’m sorry about this. I’m just doing my job.”

Sokka tightened his mouth and waved as the doctor swept out into the hall. Then it was just him and Zuko, and about four other people, but they were behind a curtain so they didn’t really count. He leaned his elbow on Zuko’s hospital bed, and then leaned his head on his hand, and that put his face dangerously close to Zuko’s scary but endearing sleeping face. When he sighed, a piece of Zuko’s dark hair shifted over his forehead.

Zuko’s eyes started to flutter open. 

“Hey there, sleeping beauty,” Sokka said softly. 

Sokka saw his throat bob when he swallowed. “Sokka?”

“Always quick on the uptake. That’s what I like about you.”

Zuko didn’t try to get up, though he braced one arm against the cot like he wanted to. He glanced around the room. “We’re in the hospital?”

“And that’s an IV in your arm.” Sokka tipped his head to the IV bag hooked up to the crook of Zuko’s elbow. “Please don’t rip it out like I know you want to. Those are your important drugs.”

Zuko slightly shook his head, and their eyes met and held. His voice was very soft. “What, no comment about me being a drug addict?”

Sokka pretended to think about it. “Hm. No. Too easy.”

“I’d hate for anything to be too easy for you,” Zuko huffed. “After all, look at us now.”

“Bold of you to assume that anything’s been a challenge up to this point.”

“Yeah?” Zuko said with a wan smile. Sokka cursed the fact that something so simple could be so cute. “Just your everyday stuff for the man of legends, Sokka?”

“Please,” Sokka smirked. “I could probably take on a million homicidal sisters right now.”

“Now that’s just excessive.”

“What can I say? I’m talented.”

“A true inspiration.”

Sokka huffed out a laugh. “Glad we’re on the same page.”

Zuko’s eyes scrunched up in a half smile, and Sokka had to take back his previous conclusion that Zuko had already reached his peak capacity for heart-stopping smiles, because this right here? This made him want to tear him off his hospital bed and hug him so tightly that he could barely breathe. Sokka could barely breathe. 

“I’m glad to be here,” Zuko said. 

“Yeah?” Sokka said, just to say something. It reminded him of saying, ‘ _My bad,’_ and how lame was that? Sokka had said, ‘ _My bad,’_ and then they’d kissed. Maybe Zuko was attracted to Sokka’s incredible dumbassery. Maybe Zuko was a moronosexual. Maybe he was exclusively, tragically attracted to dumbasses. 

In some lights, Zuko’s eyes looked like a honey brown, but in others they shone like daisies. His lips were chapped, and there was even a little cut on his bottom lip. Sokka hadn’t noticed that before. If they kissed now, it would probably taste like blood. 

“Sokka,” Zuko said, like it was torn out of him. “You—”

He didn’t finish. For a long moment, it seemed like the words were caught in his throat. 

“What about me?” Sokka prompted, his voice barely louder than a whisper. 

Zuko stared at him, struggling with something, his brow furrowed like Sokka was an enigma, some arcane puzzle designed by the spirits to make him suffer, and Sokka remembered that he was injured, and in pain, and so he decided to let it go. 

He shifted slightly back in his seat, drawing his face away. “I hate hospitals.” Sokka’s voice was back at normal volume. “And you should hate them too. Pretty soon some patrolmen are gonna be paying us a visit.”

Zuko frowned. There was sweat beading down his brow. “Did they recognize me?”

“I don’t think so. It’s just that hospitals like these can get in trouble if they don’t report this kind of stuff.” Sokka snorted. “Not everyone can be as corrupt as Katara.”

“She’s a good person.”

Sokka shrugged, like it was no big deal. “It’s what we do.”

Zuko lifted the hand on Sokka’s side of his cot and pressed the back of it lightly against Sokka’s arm. Sokka couldn’t really say what the motion meant, but it made him feel warm, like Zuko was thinking of him fondly, and it made him smile. He thought about sliding his hand into Zuko’s right then and there, letting himself clasp their fingers together tightly and never letting go, like they were lovers, like they were together. 

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Zuko said. “Seriously. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“I’m often told that I’m an irreplaceable asset to the team.”

“I mean it.” Zuko looked like he was trying to hold in a smile, and his hand hadn’t left Sokka’s arm. “I’m trying to be serious, here.”

Sokka gave a sad half-smile. “I know. But I think you would have been fine without me. I know I already said this, but I’m sorry that I wasn’t much help with Azula. If you hadn’t done something, I probably would have flying tackled her or— I don’t know. I hate how useless I was.”

Sokka blinked in surprise as Zuko wrapped his hand around Sokka’s wrist. “You aren’t useless,” Zuko said, his eyes hot and intense, staring right into Sokka’s soul. “If you weren’t there, Sokka, I— I think I would have let myself be shot.”

“Zuko,” Sokka said. 

“But you’re right. You’ve always been right. I need to take better care of myself.”

Sokka shook his head, trying to memorize the feeling of Zuko’s palm against his wrist. “Usually, you know, when other people say that, it means that they’re going to eat healthier, or something.”

Zuko grimaced. “I don’t think I’m at that level yet.”

“No fucking kidding,” Sokka huffed fondly, and he was going to do it. It would be so easy to shift his hand up into Zuko’s, to intertwine their fingers, to feel that connection. 

There was a loud knocking on the doorframe, and Sokka tore his eyes away from Zuko. 

There was Toph, slouched against the wall. 

“Am I interrupting something?” she asked, eyebrows raised. Zuko hurriedly removed his hand from Sokka’s wrist, as if it was something Toph could see. And who knew? Maybe Toph had sensed it anyways. “It’s _my_ turn with Smokes,” she announced, jerking her thumb at the empty doorway. “Get out.”

“Since when are we getting turns?” Sokka asked. “He’s _my_ problem.”

“Since right now!” Toph said, stamping her foot. 

“I’m your problem?” Zuko whispered confusedly to himself. 

“All right,” Sokka conceded, raising his palms in surrender and standing up. “I’m leaving. I’ll catch you later in the waiting room, okay? We’re gonna have to bail pretty soon.”

As he passed Toph, he clapped her on the shoulder.

“It won’t be that long,” Toph assured him. 

Sokka sent her a confused look, unable to interpret her tone, but she had already walked into Zuko’s hospital room, so he didn’t bother to ask. 

He found Katara in the waiting room, wearing green scrubs. Aang was nowhere to be seen. 

“I made him leave,” Katara explained. “With the whole traitor thing— someone needs to go and check our files and supplies.”

“Drats,” Sokka cursed. “I can never keep that guy in one place for longer than an hour. Though I guess it’s technically your fault.”

“Thanks,” Katara said drolly. “Happy to help. And speaking of helping—” Katara started smiling with too many teeth, “—You know what I should have done?”

“I really hesitate to ask, but— what?”

Katara leaned forward menacingly. “I should have said that you and Lee were married.”

“In front of your _coworkers?”_ Sokka demanded, outraged. “You little—”

“Yup,” Katara said, popping the ‘p’. “And then I would have invited you both to the New Year’s party and you would’ve had to pretend to be married the entire time.”

Sokka jabbed his finger at her. “You know this is a two-way street. _You_ could have said that you and _Bumi_ were married—”

“But my coworkers would have known that!” Katara exclaimed, like she’d just outmaneuvered him. 

“Fudge!” Sokka cursed. “Wait until I introduce you to _my_ coworkers, then.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“This is all out war, sister of mine.”

“War of the office parties,” Katara said vindictively. “You’re on.”

Sokka collapsed into the chair next to her. “Whoever loses is the person who actually gets a real date.”

Katara burst into laughter. “Why’d you have to say that? Now I don’t want to win.”

“Strategy,” Sokka said sagely.

* * *

Toph soon strode into the waiting room, prompting Sokka to meet her at the door to the hospital proper. 

“Better scurry on back,” Toph said with a taunting smile. “Smokes misses you.”

Sokka snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“Hey,” Toph said, stopping him from passing her by grabbing his arm. “You’re an easy person to fall in love with, Sokka, you know that?”

Sokka felt caught off-guard, open, like Toph had just lanced him through a soft spot in a suit of armor. 

“Toph?” he asked. 

“Forget it,” she said, roughly shoving his arm away from her. “I’ll go get the car ready.” 

Sokka stood in place, watching Toph’s small form stomp away through the hospital’s front doors. He briefly met Katara’s eyes, but his sister only shrugged. Getting the car ready must mean that Toph was itching for a getaway, and Sokka was honestly feeling much of the same. 

Sokka sent Katara a hand gesture which was two fingers walking on the palm of his other hand. Katara saluted him. Sokka supposed that meant that she was on board for hospital-breaking. (Hospital-breaking didn’t sound nearly as good as ‘prison-breaking.’)

On his way to Zuko’s room, he saw an unattended wheelchair folded up against a wall near a nurse’s station. Checking surreptitiously to see if anyone was watching, Sokka snatched it off the wall and rolled it casually in front of him all the way to Zuko’s room. 

Zuko was clutching a piece of paper in front of him. It looked like a small yellow post-it note. When Sokka entered, he looked up from it. 

“What’s up?” Sokka said, shooting a couple finger guns. “Wait— too soon?”

“Oh no,” Zuko said tonelessly. “You just triggered my gun-specific PTSD. How could you.”

Sokka rolled his eyes and brought the wheelchair up to Zuko’s cot. “Whatcha got there?”

“An address and a phone number,” Zuko said, proffering Sokka the post-it note. The address was for a place called the ‘Jasmine Dragon’ in the Lower Ring. It wasn’t too far from Katara’s apartment building. 

“Toph gave you that?” Sokka asked dubiously. 

“She didn’t write it, but yeah.” Zuko clutched the post-it tight enough to wrinkle it. “She found my uncle.”

Sokka found himself inadvertently tightening his mouth. He made himself say, “Hey, that’s great!” because his brain was telling him that this was a good thing, even though his heart was telling him that it was not. “Here.” Sokka dug out his phone, even though every motion seemed to be painful, all of a sudden. “You probably want to call him, right?”

Zuko gently took Sokka’s phone from him, but he didn’t do anything other than look at it. “Sokka, I don’t know.” He peeked up at Sokka through his lashes. “After what I did, I don’t know if he’ll even forgive me.”

Now this was news to Sokka. The fact that there was some kind of baggage between Zuko and his uncle perhaps shouldn’t have been so surprising, after hearing just a scant amount of Zuko’s sordid family history, but what can you do? “Listen,” Sokka said, resting a heavy hand on Zuko’s shoulder. “You tell him that you’re trying to be a better person now. That’s all you can do.” Sokka tightened his grip, and then let go. “And if he doesn’t accept that, then I’ll still be here.”

Zuko’s eyes were wide, and it wasn’t only in Sokka’s imagination that they were glistening a bit, too. “Sokka,” he said. 

“Handsome, charming, _and_ gives good advice,” Sokka said, stroking his chin. “Am I a catch or what?”

Zuko rolled his eyes with a huff. “Take your phone back.”

“What, my measly phone not good enough for your Highness?”

It could have been his imagination, but there was a minute tightening around Zuko’s eyes. “I can’t call him right now.”

Sokka took his phone back. “Probably for the best,” he said, hiding a small stab of worry. “Right now, we’re breaking you out of here. Not as cool as breaking out of prison, but what can you do? We gotta work with what we have. Now rip out your IV like the madman you know you are.”

“I’m not a madman,” Zuko said, as he ripped out his IV with too much vigor, like he was pulling out an offending parasite. Exactly like the madman that Sokka knew he was. 

“Just get in the wheelchair, babe.”

Zuko’s face colored a bright pink. “Did you—” his voice cracked, and maybe he wanted to say something else, but he ended up with, “Did you steal a wheelchair from a hospital?”

“I’ll put it back,” Sokka assured him. 

“I thought you were the good one.”

“I said I’ll put it back!” Sokka reached out and shoved at Zuko’s head, and Zuko ducked and laughed. Sokka wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard Zuko laugh, not like he was doing it right now, and it made him feel incredibly helpless. Because when you thought about it, Zuko was sorta hapless, and didn’t know how to talk to people, and he was kinda quiet and monosyllabic and reticent and gloomy and precious. He was precious. 

Now here Sokka had gone and done it. He’d thrown his dumb, stupid bleeding heart at this man, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. The worst part was that he couldn’t really blame anyone else but himself. 


	10. cars & cattywampus

Zuko settled himself into the wheelchair with only a small amount of stubborn reluctance, and that’s when shit started to go down. There was a commotion coming from the hallway. The sound of stamping boots. Jangling tactical armor. Assault rifles bouncing off a person’s back. A common enough sound, if strange to hear in the middle of a hospital. 

“Looks like the cavalry’s here,” Sokka said tightly. Uncomfortably. 

He thought they would have more time. 

“Now, let’s not panic,” Sokka wheezed. “We just need to get to an exit and hope that the hospital isn’t surrounded.”

Someone burst into the room and Sokka nearly jumped out of his skin as he spun around to face them. But it was only Katara. 

“Oh good, you look like you work here,” Sokka said, running over and shoving his sister towards Zuko’s wheelchair. 

“Because I _do_ work here,” Katara snapped, setting her hands on the handles of the wheelchair. “And what, exactly, is your plan here?”

“Simple.” Sokka snapped his fingers. “You run out there, screaming about getting the patient to the emergency room or whatever. Go give him an MRI. Then I’ll go steal a doctor’s coat and meet you at Toph’s car. See you in five.” Sokka started to push his sister, and subsequently Zuko, out of the room. 

“Uh, Sokka,” Zuko said, in a tone that was slightly panicked, which was ridiculous, because Sokka had told him not to panic. “My face?”

Zuko _did_ have a lovely face. This was true. But probably not the point that Zuko was getting at.

“Oh no, doctor, he’s suffered a terrible accident.” Sokka flipped Zuko’s hood over his head. “Better get him emergency personality surgery to fix all his defects.” 

Sokka couldn’t see Zuko’s face but he somehow sensed that Zuko had rolled his eyes at him. 

“All right, lover boys,” Katara said. “We’re going. Sokka, I swear if you do something stupid—”

Sokka patted her back. “See you in five.”

The hallway was busier only by the fact that the people who were normally speed-walking through it had slowed to a crawl. And that was because the patrolmen were spot-searching every man and woman, every doctor and patient that they came across. He could see them to the left— their bright red jackets were unmistakable. Five of them, it looked like. 

Katara and Zuko took off to the right. Sokka waited a moment, and then followed after them until he reached a nurse’s station, which consisted of a counter, beyond which a few nurses sat typing at desktops, and beyond that was a fork in the hallway that delved down to some doctor’s offices. 

The good thing about a group of patrolmen spot-searching everyone in a hospital is that nobody really pays any attention to the people _not_ wearing the patrol jackets. So that made it easy, really, to sneak into one of those doctor’s offices, grab a spare white coat hung up on the back of the door, and then walk out like he owned the place. He wished he had some glasses. That would have really sold the role. Oh, but even better. There was a clipboard, just hanging off the nurse’s counter. That was his, now.

Anyways. You might be wondering why he was doing this. But run the numbers. There wasn’t going to be enough time. Someone needed to stall the patrolmen long enough for Katara to get Zuko out of the building, and for Katara to get herself back _into_ the building and remain unaffiliated (or as unaffiliated as she could get, considering that Katara’s name was apparently on the X-Soldier’s big bad Avatar-list. But he wasn’t going to think about that right now). 

So, yes, Sokka decided that it was time to commit a felony. 

Sokka strolled up to the patrolmen and said, “Officers, how can I help you?” and had the unfettered delight of having five grizzled Pyrian soldiers’ sole attention. 

The leader, a man with a full black beard with spiky side-burns, popped out his phone and roughly shoved it towards Sokka’s face. On it was a photo of Zuko that looked closer to a mugshot than anything else. Zuko looked a few years younger, though just as scarred. His hair was closer to a buzz-cut. “We have reports of a known fugitive entering this hospital.”

That told Sokka a couple different things. _This_ patrol wasn’t here because of the reported gunshot. That must mean that there was a _second_ patrol, either on its way or somewhere else in the building.

“That man,” Sokka said, tapping his chin, “I’ve seen him, actually.” He didn’t need to act to make himself look worried. “What has he done?”

The patrolmen drew his phone away. “That _man_ is the President’s only son, doctor.”

Sokka had to blink. “Come again?”

He didn’t deign Sokka with any explanation for whatever nonsense had just sprouted out of his mouth. “Where did you last see him?”

Sokka swallowed and said, “He was checked in for treatment. I’d have to— I’d have to ask someone to look up his room number.”

“Do that,” the patrolman ordered. 

“Uh, come along, officers,” Sokka said, and led the group of soldiers over to the nurses’ station that he had just stolen from. He was beginning to think that this might not have been that great of an idea. 

When he reached the counter, he saw that the nurse sitting behind it, a man with wispy, balding hair, looked frozen, like a deer in the road watching an oncoming sixteen wheeler truck. Sokka leaned over the counter and said, with as much authority as he could muster, “I’m going to need you to look up a patient for me.”

The nurse slowly turned that look onto Sokka. Sokka gave his most winning smile, while the patrolmen and their rifles crowded up the hallway right behind him. 

“Which— which patient?” the nurse stuttered. 

“Just bring up a list of everyone who was admitted today,” Sokka said. 

“That’s,” the nurse wasn’t really looking at Sokka, but at the patrol behind him, “That’s a lot of patients.”

“Well, it’s a good thing the good patrol of this city has a lot of patience!” Sokka said, loudly, not daring to sneak a look behind him to see what any of the patrolmen thought of this particular statement. 

The leader of the group brought himself up to the counter, once again proffering his phone. “We’re looking for this one.” The interesting thing about the leader striding forward was that Sokka was now almost completely surrounded. 

There was a quiet moment, in-between the nurse’s shaky typing. 

“Officers, if you don’t mind,” Sokka started to say, already regretting opening his mouth, “But if this is the President’s son, why is he a fugitive?”

The leader of the patrolmen gave Sokka a long, inscrutable look. Sokka tried not to fidget underneath it. “You ask a lot of questions.”

Sokka felt a bead of sweat slowly slide down his neck. 

Luckily, another commotion saved him from having to try to defend himself. 

Looks like the _second_ patrol group had arrived. 

Sokka raised his brows. “Backup?” 

The leader of the patrolmen finally tore his gaze away. He looked back the way that they had come, and distantly, Sokka thought he could see the grey-haired doctor that had treated Zuko. He was leading another group of five towards the room that Zuko had just vacated. 

“Oh, that’s right!” Sokka exclaimed, like he had just remembered something. “I knew he looked familiar. We had a patient come in with a gunshot wound, earlier.” He pointed back down the hall. “That must have been his room!”

“A gunshot?” the patrolmen leader snapped. “Why didn’t you say that earlier?”

“That’s,” Sokka squeaked, clutching his clipboard, “not my department.”

The leader pinned him with a look that felt a lot like being held at gunpoint, until another patrolman came and clapped him on the shoulder. “Zhao, come on.”

“You stay here,” the leader ordered, pointing at the tiled floor. Then he gestured in a ‘move-out, men’ kind of way, over his shoulder. 

Sokka stayed obediently in place just long enough for all five of them to turn their backs. Then he turned and full-out sprinted down the hallway. 

Distantly, he heard someone shout behind him, but he didn’t turn his back, and he hoped to hell that the patrolmen wouldn’t start shooting at him in the middle of a hospital. As soon as he turned a bend in the hallway he dropped the clipboard and ripped off the doctor’s coat. He didn’t stop running until he finally found an emergency exit, emerging out into the hospital’s parking lot. 

He didn’t stop running until he finally spotted Toph’s black sedan. The rear passenger door popped open before he reached it and he dove inside, his head landing haphazardly into Zuko’s lap. He heard the sound of the door closing. 

Then the car was taking off. 

“Sokka, what the fuck?” Toph said. 

Sokka flipped over in the seat so that he could see something other than the material of Zuko’s sweatpants. “Are we being followed?” 

“Uh, you tell me!” Toph barked. 

“Please tell me this isn’t a car chase,” Yu said sourly. “I’m not equipped for a car chase. There’s _traffic._ ” 

“They followed you out but they didn’t have time to get into their cars,” Zuko said. He winced. “They might’ve gotten our license plate.”

“Oh,” Yu moaned, “Now I’m a _fugitive._ I’m not getting paid enough for this!”

“Calm down, Yu!” Toph said. “We’ll just call the Mechanist and have him fudge our records. We never owned a car with this plate, all right?”

“I’m a criminal!” Yu moaned. 

Sokka’s pocket started buzzing, and he finally forced himself up into a sitting position, clawing himself up with a steadying hand on Zuko’s shoulder. “Everyone shut up— I’m getting a call!”

To Sokka’s surprise, everyone did shut up. 

It was an unknown number. 

“Who is this?” he demanded to know, half-expecting it to be a telemarketer. Half-hoping it was going to be a telemarketer. 

“I think you know,” Azula said to him. 

Sokka nearly dropped his phone. “ _Azula?”_

“ _Azula?”_ Zuko shouted. Sokka idly reached out and pawed at Zuko’s face to keep him from stealing Sokka’s phone. 

“How did you get this number?” Sokka asked. Zuko had grabbed the wrist holding his phone and was trying to drag the phone away from his ear. Sokka was firmly pressing Zuko’s face towards the window. 

“What, like it’s hard?” Azula said, and Sokka wanted to scream. 

“I thought you were going to leave us alone!”

“It’s not _my_ fault you were caught on the hospital’s security cameras,” she said, all sweet innocence. “And it’s certainly not my fault at all that a city-wide search can’t be called off in a matter of hours. I thought you were smarter than this.”

“I knew we never should have trusted you.”

“Is that so?” she purred. “Is Zuzu feeling better? Tell him I said hi. Or is he listening in? Did he finally tell you who he is?”

A roiling storm had taken root in Sokka’s stomach. “Did you call me just to taunt me?”

“Well, obviously,” she said. “Have you abandoned him yet?”

“You told them to say that.” Sokka didn’t feel like he needed to elaborate. 

“I told them to tell the truth.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Do I need to spell it out for you?”

Sokka ground his teeth together. “What’s your fucking _deal?_ ”

“I’m just trying to do the Avatar a favor,” Azula said, and Sokka could imagine her pedantic smile. “You know that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” 

“It’s not working,” Sokka said firmly. “You can stop trying now.”

She started laughing at him.

Sokka rolled down the window and chucked his phone out into moving traffic.

The four of them— Yu, driving with barely controlled panic, his face pale and drawn, his mustache drooping, constantly checking his rearview mirror, Toph, half-turned around in the front passenger seat, her dog Badger curled on her lap, her brows furrowed in untold confusion, Zuko, frozen mid-way through wrestling away Sokka’s arm, and Sokka, who was staring blankly at the hand that used to be holding his cell phone— were dead silent in the aftermath of this decision. 

“Gotta say,” Sokka finally wheezed, breaking the tension, “I didn’t really think that one through.”

“Did you just—” Toph spluttered, “Please tell me he just hung up. Please tell me he didn’t— ”

“He just threw his phone out the window,” Zuko said faintly. 

“That’s a public hazard!” Yu hissed. 

“I panicked!” Sokka yelled. 

“I thought you told me not to panic!” Zuko yelled right back. 

“Yeah, but that doesn’t stop _me_ from panicking!”

“Everyone _shut up!”_ Toph yelled, and once again, everyone did shut up. She cut her hand through the air like that would cut out all of their voices, and it worked surprisingly well. “Sokka. Explain. Right now.”

“Zuko’s sister is a psychopath and she’s trying really, really hard to fuck with me,” Sokka said, his voice heavy. 

“Sokka,” Zuko said, clutching at his arm, “What did she say?”

Sokka kept his eyes on the seat in front of him. “It’s nothing. Like I said, she’s trying to fuck with me.”

There was a beat where everyone seemed to be holding their breath. They were stopped at a red light. Distantly, they could hear the radio of the car next to them, a low bass beat. 

“Hm, all right. Whatever,” Toph said, sounding unconvinced, and the spell was broken. They could breathe again. “The psychopath governor is a problem for Future Us. Right now, Current Us has a car problem. And by _that,_ I mean we gotta trash this car.”

Yu interjected, “Have I mentioned that I did not sign up for this? I did not sign up for this.”

“Trash it?” Sokka said, his voice reaching a higher register. “I mean, if we swap the plates and lay low for a little while, it’s probably fine. Right? We don’t need to trash it.”

“Uh, yeah we do,” Toph said, slightly too eagerly. “We’re not driving this thing back to my metaphorical penthouse.” Because Toph’s apartment was actually on the ground floor, but that's beside the point. “We’re driving this bitch into Lake Laogai.”

“We are _not,”_ Yu squeaked. 

“Coward,” Toph crowed. “Give me the wheel.” Toph reached over to grope in the vague direction of the wheel. 

There was nothing that quite united people like the thought of having a blind woman drive a car into a lake with both of them still stuck in it. Zuko’s grip on Sokka’s arm turned more into a one-armed embrace. Sokka reached over to clutch at the hood of Zuko’s jumper, both of them pressed together like that would save them when the vehicle hit the water. 

“No!” Zuko and Sokka yelled. 

“Yes!” Toph cried. 

* * *

Sokka hadn’t been to a funeral since his first girlfriend had died, all those years ago, but that was nothing at all like the impromptu funeral for Toph’s black sedan sinking into the polluted silt of Lake Laogai. 

Sokka clasped his fist into his palm and bowed. “May she rest in peace.”

Zuko was standing, slouched, with his hands stuffed in his hoodie pockets, his hood over his head, directly to Sokka’s left on the lake’s shore. He kicked at a broken piece of a water bottle. He probably shouldn’t have been on his feet, but Sokka had at least managed to convince him to sit out on the arduous task of pushing a car into a lake. 

There was a burbling noise as the sedan sank a foot deeper into the water. 

Toph was standing to Sokka’s right with a huge, shit-eating grin, hands on her hips. And Yu was standing next to Toph, looking, for all intents and purposes, like his soul had left his body. 

Sokka gently elbowed Zuko in the arm, and Zuko startled into action. 

“Uh, she was a… car,” Zuko said. 

“She really was a car,” Sokka said, nodding passionately. 

“And…” Zuko drew out, looking at Sokka for some sort of cue that Sokka was adamantly not going to give him. “A good one?”

Sokka gave him a stern look. 

“A good one,” Zuko said more firmly. 

Sokka nodded appreciatively. 

“This car… will be, uh,” Zuko squinted at him, “Missed?”

“Why are you so terrible at this?” Sokka asked. “It’s a car funeral, Zuko. Have some goddamn respect.”

“Yeah, Zuko,” Toph said. “Show some goddamn respect.”

It was a light-hearted moment. They were joking around. Toph was rich enough to buy fourteen cars, if she wanted to, so it wasn’t like it really hurt anyone, besides maybe some conservationists who were crying at the fact that they were going to have to tow a car out of this lake at some point.

So Zuko really shouldn’t have flinched at that. He really shouldn’t have looked like Sokka and Toph had just punched him in the gut, or ripped his still bleeding heart out of his chest. 

But then his face was back to cool neutrality, and he said, quietly, “Sorry.”

Needless to say, Sokka felt like his own heart was just ripped out of his chest and he didn’t even know why. What had they said wrong? Had they been too harsh with him? 

“No, I’m sorry,” he said, hurriedly. “You’re great at car funerals. Me and Toph were just fucking around.” He jabbed his elbow at Toph’s arm. 

“Yeah,” she coughed. “Sorry, Smokes. Best car funeral I’ve ever been to.”

It was the _only_ car funeral Toph had ever been to, but Sokka didn’t say that. 

Zuko slightly shook his head, and Sokka knew that any amusement he’d previously felt was gone. “Sorry for making you all do this.”

Sokka threw his arm around Zuko’s waist and tugged him against his side. “That’s enough apologizing outta you! I think we just knocked something off Toph’s bucket list, right, Toph?”

“I was supposed to drive it off a bridge first,” Toph said. 

Sokka kicked a pebble at her feet. 

“Oh, are we supposed to be making him feel better? Yeah, Smokes! Totally knocked something off my bucket list!” 

Sokka sighed and studied Zuko’s profile, a few scant centimeters away. His head was ducked, his eyes staring down the middle horizon. Both of their sides were pressed together companionably, Sokka’s arm tucked around Zuko’s back. Zuko didn’t make any move to push him away, but he didn’t put his arm around Sokka’s back, either. 

The sun was setting. It glinted red off the top of Toph’s sedan, the last part of the vehicle still visible in the murky water. 

“Okay,” Sokka drew out. “I think that is our cue to scatter to the winds like a bunch of legally designated terrorists.”

“Yeah,” Toph said. When Sokka glanced at her, she was picking her nose and trying to wipe it off on her still-comatose driver. Yu regained enough of his faculties to take a shifty step backward. “Yu, call us all taxis.”

Yu sighed. “Will do, ma’am.”

“You guys good?” Toph asked, holding up her fist. Yu started walking back towards the road. 

Sokka drew his arm away from Zuko’s back to step forward and attempt to tap his own fist against Toph’s, but she dodged him and just punched him in the shoulder. Sokka rubbed his arm and said, “We’ll be fine. Probably. You know how it is.”

“Going back to Katara’s?” she asked. 

Sokka winced, half-turning around, “Zuko, did Katara—?”

Zuko finally drew his eyes away from the horizon. “She gave me her keys. She also told me to tell you not to touch her stuff.”

Sokka snorted. “Of course she did.”

“Then I’ll catch you all later, then,” Toph said. “And I’ll buy you some new phones tomorrow. Just because I’m awesome like that.”

“Toph…” Sokka started to say. 

“Don’t even try it, Snoozles.” She swatted her hand at his face, and then they all followed Yu back towards the road.

It was honestly kind of mundane and a little bit sad, the way the four of them stood on the sidewalk waiting for the taxis. Like children whose parents forgot to pick them up after play rehearsal. The streetlights started to click on, but it was still a few hours before curfew. 

When Toph and Yu and Badger got in their taxi, Zuko waved but then must have realized that Toph wouldn’t be able to tell that he had waved, so he said, out loud, “I’m waving goodbye.” 

Sokka snickered and said, “I’m holding in manly tears at the idea of our tragic parting. I’m trying not to grab you and beg you not to go. Zuko is holding me back.”

“You’re a dick,” Toph said, and flipped him off. 

The taxi door closed, and then there were two. 

“So, I didn’t want to bring this up, before,” Sokka said into the silence. He pressed his hands into his jacket pockets, staring at the empty pavement of the curb. “Because this day has been kind of shit, so far. But, uh.” He should really just come out and say it. 

He snuck a quick look at Zuko. His face was tinged pink, his eyes wide, his lips slightly parted. The dying light made everything look warmer, coated in gold. It made his eyes look burnished. 

“I think your ID is already blown, buddy,” Sokka said sadly. 

Zuko’s shoulders dropped and he turned his face to the sky with a groan, nearly dislodging his hood. Sokka hadn't expected such a strong reaction from him. 

“It wouldn’t be that much of a problem if your sister actually called off the manhunt like she said she would,” Sokka pointed out.

“She wasn’t lying about that,” Zuko said firmly. “She called it off. If she wanted to bring me in, she would do it herself.”

“But, the hospital.” Sokka realized that Zuko didn’t actually know what had happened in the hospital. “There were two patrols. One of them was there because they’d caught you, specifically, on their cameras. Had nothing to do with the reported gunshot.”

Zuko frowned. “That’s weird.”

Sokka ran a hand over his hair. In his head, he heard Azula’s voice, saying, _Do I need to spell it out for you?_

_That’s the President’s only son._

Sokka let out a breath. “Maybe you’re right. She’s probably just fucking with me.”

_Zuko calls the President ‘Ozai.’_

Zuko furrowed his brow and tightened his jaw. “What did she say to you? Before.” 

“She literally just called to taunt me.”

“If she calls you again, hang up.”

Sokka sank back on his heels, crossing his arms. “As opposed to what, throwing my phone out the window?” Perhaps in any other circumstance it would have come off as a joke, but now it just seemed angry. Tetchy. Yeah, Sokka had thrown his phone out the window, and no, he did not want to hear comments about it. And no, Zuko did not get to control who he hung up on. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Zuko said. 

Sokka cocked his head. “Then what did you mean?”

The taxi pulled up to the curb. 

For one long moment, Sokka and Zuko stared at each other, unmoving. Then Sokka went around to the other side of the car and got inside. Silently, they input their ID information into the console. Sokka put in his credit card, and then gave the address to a building a block away from Katara’s apartment. 

There was an equal chance that Zuko's blown ID would result in a situation that was perfectly fine or absolutely terrible. Judging by how this day had already panned out, Sokka was leaning towards absolutely terrible. 

After a few minutes had passed, seated on cheap upholstery, Sokka's backpack placed at his feet, and listening to the taxi driver’s radio’s golf commentary, Zuko finally said, “I don’t like the idea that she’s targeting you.”

“She’s not targeting me,” Sokka said tightly. “She’s targeting you. She just thinks she can use me for it.”

The taxi driver changed the radio station to something hip-hop. 

Zuko moved his hands into his lap. Sokka saw that he had one fist clenched in his other hand. “You really think that today’s a shit day?” he asked. 

There was something about the question that was slightly off, but Sokka couldn’t place why. “Can’t say I’d put it in my top five.”

Zuko nodded towards the window. “Uh, cool. Cool.”

Sokka raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything else. When they eventually got out of the taxi, clambering out onto the sidewalk, there weren’t any patrolmen waiting to arrest them. Or to shoot them on sight. There were just some businessmen walking home. Kids out walking their dogs. A jogger. 

“Gotta walk a block,” Sokka said, turning to Zuko. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry about making you walk again. You really shouldn’t be.”

Zuko looked uncomfortable. He had his hands tucked into his pockets again. “It’s fine. I can walk.”

Something about the way he said it made Sokka go all soft, thinking of this impossibly stubborn man. He took a careful step closer. “You sure? You know I can carry you.”

“No,” Zuko snapped, and it suddenly made Sokka think of an injured patrolman bleeding out on the street, about Sokka asking, _Can you walk?_ and that nameless patrolman saying, _Yes._

Their gazes met. Sokka saw the hardness in Zuko's gaze fracture and splinter, until Zuko’s eyes were smiling, just a little bit. 

That made Sokka smile, just a little bit.

Sokka cleared his throat. “We should get going.”

When they set off together, their shoulders brushed. 

Sokka’s exhaustion was really starting to catch up with him. He found himself starting to yawn and then stopping it midway through. He idly turned his gaze and saw that Zuko was looking at him. But when he caught him at it, the other man quickly turned away.

Sokka got nervous as he crossed the street to Katara’s apartment. He thought that he would always get a little nervous when he crossed that street from now on. Funny how things changed. 

Zuko opened Katara’s apartment building with her key. Her building had more of a lobby than Sokka’s did. It even had a working elevator, which they quickly commandeered to bring them up to the second floor. But when they got out of the elevator, Zuko stopped Sokka with a light touch on the arm. 

“Hey, uh, this may seem weird,” Zuko said, like he was out of breath. Like he had spent the last five minutes jogging in the elevator instead of leaning against the railing. “But I, uh. Didn’t think that today was shit.”

Sokka blinked. “You didn’t?”

“I mean, it was,” Zuko huffed around a sardonic smile. “But, uh. You made it fun. I think you’re really…” Zuko closed his mouth and then opened it, “Fun.”

“Fun,” Sokka repeated. 

Zuko was grimacing, color leaching into his cheeks. 

“Was everyone else fun, too?” Sokka asked, shifting so that they were facing each other, chest to chest. Barely half a foot between them. 

Zuko’s gaze skittered toward the floor, and then back toward Sokka. He took a half-step closer. Sokka’s heart started to beat faster. 

The elevator door opened with a _ding._

“Sokka, you _asshole,”_ Katara said, and kicked him in the shin. 

Sokka brought his knee up to his chest and said, loudly, “Ow!”

“Why the _fuck,”_ Katara said, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him back and forth like he was a limp ragdoll, “didn’t you pick up your _phone?_ ”

The only answer he could come up with was: “Uh.”

“ _You,_ ” Katara said, finally releasing Sokka from his torment only to turn onto Zuko. “Why didn’t he answer his phone?”

“He threw his phone out the window,” Zuko said, going straight for the kill with absolutely no remorse. Shit, they were just having a _moment._ They were having a moment and then he had to go and shoot Sokka right where it hurts. 

See if Sokka ever thought dreamily about his stupid handsome face _ever_ again.

 _“Dude,_ ” Sokka exclaimed. 

“Sokka!” Katara yelled. 

At which point, a door opened down the hallway and an older gentleman with a full head of greying hair told them to, in no uncertain terms, “Shut the fuck up!”

The door slammed closed. 

“Sorry,” Katara mouthed, wincing in the older man’s direction. 

Katara grabbed them both by the ear and dragged them to her door, which she opened with her spare key. Once they were safely inside, she turned her accusatory gaze onto them, and Sokka was very tired. 

“Let’s at least order take-out first,” Sokka said.

* * *

Katara’s apartment was nicer than Sokka’s, by no one’s surprise. It had a full three rooms, not counting the bathroom— a bedroom, a kitchen, and a living room. Katara even got all art deco on the walls. She had a lot of abstract paintings, one of which Sokka knew that Aang had painted for her because it was easily the most shoddily rendered painting that Sokka had ever seen in his life. It was a smiley face, kinda. 

But more importantly, you knew Katara had her life more together than Sokka did because she had a shoe rack. Sokka had to admit that he was jealous of her shoe rack. He had pointed it out to Zuko, but Sokka wasn’t sure that Zuko really _got it_. 

They’d had a harrowing dinner from the convenience store on Katara’s block, spent splayed out on her pull-out coach. It consisted of 90% Sokka and Katara yelling at each other, 2% Zuko looking confused and weary, and 8% watching a cooking competition show on TV, and then yelling at _that._

Which finally led to Sokka’s punishment. Doing all of Katara’s dishes. And he decided to do them long after Katara had gone to bed, when it was just Sokka and Zuko in her dimly lit kitchen with the chipped aqua-blue cabinets. 

“You know you don’t have to be here, right?” Sokka said, hip leaning against the counter to the right of the sink, his arms crossed, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Zuko was mirroring him on the other side of the sink, his own arms crossed. “You should go lay down.”

“I’m tired of hearing that.”

“Then maybe you should go lay down and you’ll feel better about it.”

Zuko leaned his head back with a put-upon sigh. It made Sokka smirk. He waited for a moment, but Zuko showed no intentions of going back to the living room. The pile of dishes waited, ever patiently, in the sink, but Sokka showed no intentions of grabbing the sponge. 

“Is this a guilt thing?” Sokka finally asked. 

“What?” Zuko scoffed. “No.”

“So you don’t feel guilty for bothering Katara or Toph or whatever the hell’s going on in your head.”

A pause. Sokka saw Zuko’s jaw working, but he didn’t say anything. 

“And you don’t know what to do to make it up to them,” Sokka said. “So you’re here.”

“There’s you,” Zuko said roughly. He brought his fist up to his mouth and cleared his throat. “You’ve had to deal with the most shit so far. There’s you, too.”

Sokka felt himself forming a softer smile. He picked up Katara’s dish towel and shuffled it between his hands. The smile slowly turned into something more devious as an idea occurred to him.

“Hey, here’s an idea,” Sokka said, peeking at Zuko over his shoulder. “Since you’re so guilt-wracked. Why don’t I teach you how to wash the dishes?”

Zuko nearly jumped in place. “Yes,” he said, like Sokka had just offered a dying man a glass of water. His eagerness was endearing. Sokka bet he could have asked Zuko to do any chore for him, at that moment, and Zuko would have fallen over himself to do it. 

Not exactly the fearsome image of the X-Soldier. 

“Come over here,” Sokka waved, and Zuko settled himself in front of the sink. Sokka threw the dish towel on the counter, and then wrapped himself around Zuko’s back. He felt the hard lines of Zuko’s shoulder blades, felt the other man’s entire body tense up. Sokka settled his chin onto Zuko’s shoulder, ostensibly so that he could see Zuko’s dishwashing, but with the added benefit of feeling the brush of Zuko’s dark hair against his face. 

Sokka ran both his hands down Zuko’s forearms until they settled, tingling and warm, on Zuko’s wrists. 

“Is this,” Zuko whispered, just loud enough for Sokka to hear it, “how you’re supposed to wash the dishes?”

Sokka hummed, resisting the urge to press his mouth into Zuko’s shoulder. “No, dumbass. This is how you teach someone to wash the dishes.”

“Ah-huh,” Zuko said shakily. “Sure.”

Sokka turned his head the barest amount, feeling the tingling light brush of Zuko’s hair. “Who’s the expert here? I’ve been washing dishes for over ten years, now. I think I know what I’m talking about.”

Zuko let out a soft snort and Sokka finally felt him relax. Or relax as much as Zuko ever did. “I’m sorry for doubting you.”

“You should be,” Sokka said around a smile. “You never forget your first dishwashing teacher.”

Zuko’s shoulders shook with what might have been laughter, though he didn’t make a sound. But he _was_ smiling, so it was probably laughter. “Thanks for being my first.”

Sokka’s grin grew wider. “You’re a tough case, I’ll give you that. But I think we can get you into shape. What do you say,” Sokka pressed his mouth right up against Zuko’s ear, “we start with the plate technique?”

Zuko pushed his shoulder up to cover his ear and knock Sokka’s face away. Sokka leaned back with his own barely suppressed chuckles as Zuko released a laugh that was dangerously close to giggle-territory. It was dangerous because if Zuko actually giggled, Sokka would die immediately on the spot. A hazardous effect of maintaining close proximity with Zuko-like entities. 

Sokka resettled his chin on Zuko’s shoulder. “Now, see, the trick is, you gotta pick up the plate. You following me?”

“You’re gonna have to go slower. Can’t keep up.”

“All right, all right. So.” Sokka reached out and picked up a plate for him. “You see this?”

“Excellent technique, Teacher.”

“Restrain yourself, buddy, we haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.”

“There’s a good part?”

Sokka bit his lip to keep himself from laughing again. “Heresy.”

“Sorry. Did I get myself kicked out of your dojo?”

“You did, but I re-invited you.”

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.” Sokka shifted the plate to his other hand, and then grabbed the sponge. “Now here’s the tough part. You gotta put dish soap _on_ the sponge. I only have two hands, so you do it.”

“I dunno, man. Seems pretty difficult.”

“Ah, shit. I just kicked you out again.”

Zuko started to turn his head in Sokka’s direction but then he stopped it. Sokka felt the brush of his hair. “You think you could let me back in?” Zuko asked softly. 

Sokka placed the plate back into the sink and dropped the sponge next to the soap. He hesitated, his hands hovering over the counter, before he brought them gently around Zuko’s stomach, careful of his injury. 

“I dunno,” Sokka said. 

Zuko raised a shaking hand and placed it on Sokka’s forearm. It was cold. Sokka stared at it for a moment, and he noticed that Zuko’s pinky was slightly crooked, like he’d broken it and it had healed the wrong way. Sokka thought that a lot of things about Zuko were like that. 

“I need you to talk to me,” Sokka said. 

“Okay.” Zuko closed his eyes. 

“I need to know,” Sokka wasn’t sure what he needed to know, “I need to know everything. Everything you’re keeping from me.” 

“Okay,” Zuko said again. 

Sokka spread out his palm against Zuko’s shirt. “Okay.” Then he dragged his arms away from Zuko’s stomach and took a step back. Zuko stood still, for a moment, before Zuko turned around to face him, leaning back against the counter. 

“Hey, Sokka,” Zuko began, and then seemed to struggle with himself, eyes drawn to the floor. 

“Yeah?”

“We were never going to do the dishes, were we?”

It was such an obvious ploy at lightening the mood, but still it made Sokka laugh. He wiped at his smile with his hand and said, “I think it’s high time we went and passed out on the couch.”

Sokka still had his backpack and their toothbrushes, but he hadn't packed any spare clothes. So after brushing their teeth, the two of them, still wearing the clothes they’d spent the entire day in, settled down on Katara’s queen-sized pull-out couch, each clutching their own spare blanket and pillow. Sokka had slept on that pull-out couch more times than he could possibly count, but it had never felt so comfortable than it did in that moment. He felt like his entire body was ready to collapse into a vaguely human-shaped puddle. 

In the darkened living room, Sokka couldn’t see much more than the bare outline of Zuko’s face, but somehow, he felt like Zuko was looking at him. 

“Hey, Sokka?” Zuko whispered.

“Hm?”

“I promise,” his voice cracked, “I promise I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”

“Hm.” Sokka blinked tiredly. “All right.”

“It’s just.” Zuko’s voice grew impossibly quieter. “You won’t like what you’ll hear.”

Sokka scrunched his eyes closed. 

“I’m sorry about that,” he heard Zuko say, and maybe something else, but Sokka couldn’t place what that something else was because, by that point, his body and mind had grown heavy, and he’d completely drifted off. 

So he didn’t hear Zuko say, “I really like you.” 


	11. talks & tergiversate

If there was ever a day to sleep in, it was this one. To recount the previous nightmare that one might classify as yesterday: he got kicked out of his own apartment, he’d dragged an injured man halfway across town, they’d both nearly gotten shot, the injured man nearly died from his injury, they went to the hospital and then broke out of the hospital, then Sokka threw his phone out the window and then they trashed someone’s car in a lake. 

Also, Sokka and Zuko kissed somewhere in the middle of all that, but he supposed that could be easily missed what with the constant terror of living in a war state. 

Sokka woke gradually that morning, free from any alarms that he usually set on his phone. The sunlight blaring through Katara’s windows told him it was closer to midday. He turned and buried his face into his pillow. It was comforting, but eventually he wanted to know if Zuko was still there, and so he peeked open his eyes. 

Zuko wasn’t on his side of the bed. 

It panicked him enough that he shot straight up, making himself dizzy. He put a hand over his eyes, centering himself, before he stumbled out of the tangle of blankets he’d trapped himself in and into the kitchen. 

Zuko was sitting at Katara’s little round dining table that she never used. He had a mug in front of him and was reading a newspaper. Sokka had no idea where he had found the newspaper because Katara, for sure, didn’t have one. 

“At least you’re not smoking,” Sokka said, semi-coherently. 

Zuko lowered the newspaper in a gesture that looked so much like ‘old sit-com dad’ that Sokka felt morally obligated to fetch him a pair of reading glasses and two and a half kids. 

“Your hair’s a mess,” Zuko told him. 

Sokka reached up and patted at his hair, but he didn’t actually feel like trying to fix it. 

“Sit down,” Zuko said, pointing to the chair opposite him. 

Sokka went to sit down with little more than a grumble of, “Bossy.”

He watched Zuko putter around Katara’s kitchen with stern-faced determination, but eventually he found another mug and poured coffee in it from the coffeemaker. Zuko plopped the mug down in front of Sokka. 

He hadn’t managed to find what Sokka liked to call ‘his’ mug (‘What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back? A stick.’) but Sokka appreciated it nonetheless. 

“Did you make me coffee?” Sokka asked. 

“Yeah.” Zuko resumed his own position at the table. 

“Did you… put anything in it?” Sokka was pretty sure that the coffee was black. 

Zuko frowned. “Why would I put anything in it?”

Sokka sighed. “You’re a monster, but you’re cute, so. I’ll let it pass.”

Zuko’s frown turned more into disgruntled confusion. Sokka got up to add milk and sugar to his coffee. 

When he sat back down, Zuko said, “I’d make you breakfast, but I really don’t know how.”

“Glad to see that you’re as terrible a househusband as you ever were.”

Zuko’s mouth quirked at the end. “You should really file a divorce.”

“But the taxes.” 

“Ah, of course,” Zuko said. He took a sip out of his mug to hide his small smile. “The taxes.” 

Sokka took a moment to nurse his coffee. Zuko picked up his newspaper again, as if he wanted to get back to reading it, though Sokka couldn’t imagine what he was reading on there that wasn’t just Pyrian propaganda. But then Zuko put the newspaper down again and wrapped both his hands around his mug. He hunched down in his seat, his elbows on the table. His hair completely concealed his eyes. 

“Katara’s at work?” Sokka asked. 

“Yeah,” Zuko said shortly. “Left a little while ago. Told me to tell you not to touch her stuff.”

“You know, she may tell me that every day for the rest of my life, but I’m still gonna touch her stuff.”

Zuko snorted. “How admirable.”

“Sibling instinct. Let’s go move all her furniture five centimeters to the right.”

“We’re not going to do that.”

Sokka grumbled to himself, mimicking his tone, “We’re not going to do that.” He took a sip of his coffee. 

He nearly spat it out when Zuko said, “If I ever tried to touch some of Azula’s stuff, she probably would have tortured me to death.”

It took Sokka a hot second, hacking and coughing at the table, but eventually he realized that it was supposed to be a joke, and he tried to school his face accordingly. 

“Wow, that’s— something, yeah.”

Zuko’s face seemed to fall, and Sokka started to feel bad. 

But before he could try to make things right, Zuko blurted, “I rehearsed this all morning.”

Sokka felt his brows rise. “You… did?”

Zuko nodded frantically. 

“Well,” Sokka said dubiously, “Sorry to tell you this, but it wasn’t that good of a joke.”

“No,” Zuko hurriedly, releasing his grip on his mug to gesture negatively. “About me. I’ll tell you everything. About myself. About who I am.”

“Oh,” Sokka said, momentarily shocked. “Right now?”

“Would you,” Zuko started to look increasingly panicked, “Do you not—? I mean, yesterday you said—”

“No!” Sokka half-yelled. “I mean, yes, right now would be good. Thank you.”

They stared at each other with wide eyes. 

“The coffee.” Sokka finally cleared his throat. “Trying to butter me up?”

“My father is President Ozai,” Zuko said. 

Sokka blinked at him. 

“Shit,” Zuko cursed, running his hand through his hair, clutching at the stands, “Damn it. I was supposed to start with. Uh. Hi, my name is Zuko.” He looked up at Sokka. “Hi, my name is Zuko.”

Sokka sensed, somehow, that this was going to go terribly. 

“I know,” Sokka said somberly. 

“Yeah.” Zuko let go of his hair only to brush it back away from his forehead. “Yeah, of course you already know my name. No shit.”

“I know that your father’s the President.”

Time seemed to stand still. They stared at each other across the table, a long stretch of wood spread between them. The newspaper’s headline read, ‘EXECUTIVE ORDER AIMS TO ENSURE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC.’ The headline underneath that read, ‘GOV. LONG FENG TO INTRODUCE SANCTIONS LIMITING PUBLIC GATHERINGS.’

“You know,” Zuko said. 

“Since yesterday.”

Zuko gathered his face in his hands. His voice came out muffled. Timid. “How?”

“Azula wanted me to know,” Sokka said. 

“The phone call,” Zuko mumbled into his hands. 

“The second patrol,” Sokka said. 

“Oh.” 

Sokka almost couldn’t hear him. 

“And what do you—” Zuko started to say, “What does that—”

“Zuko, look at me.”

Zuko drew his miserable face away from his hands. 

Sokka tried to keep his voice gentle. “Let’s just start from the beginning.”

Zuko gave a stuttering nod. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and said, “I joined the army when I was eighteen. I got discharged when I was twenty-two.”

Sokka leaned his face on his hand. “And when you went to high school, you were a theatre kid,” Sokka said. 

Sokka thought that the look Zuko gave him was relieved. Relieved that he didn’t have to talk about the army just yet. Relieved that he could still put it off. “It was the club that took up the most hours.”

That thought settled uncomfortably in Sokka’s mind like an unwelcome guest. It clicked uncomfortably well with the idea that— “So you didn’t have to go home.”

Zuko gave a tight nod. 

It shouldn’t have been that much of a radical change in Sokka’s mind, but finding out that Zuko and Sokka had both shared the same dubious taste in high school clubs was one of the first things they had bonded over. And to think that there was something dark lurking underneath it on Zuko’s end— it didn’t bode well for the rest of the story that Zuko had to tell. 

“It wasn’t all that bad,” Zuko said, like he was already trying to soften the blow for Sokka. “My dad just thought that we had to be training or studying all the time.”

“Yeah, I can imagine the President could be, uh… overbearing.” And the image was starting to take shape, now— a lonely boy with too many responsibilities, too much pressure placed on too little shoulders. This was the household that had made Azula. This was the household that had made the X-Soldier. 

Now that Sokka was thinking about it, he realized that he didn’t actually know all that much about the President. He certainly hadn’t known he’d had any children, and he didn’t remember if the President had a wife, either. He was just this evil face— though an admittedly regally-handsome kind of face, but clinically handsome, you know, like how you’d look at a picture of a supermodel, and _fuck no, Sokka was not attracted to Zuko’s dad, okay—_ He was just this evil face, plastered everywhere on posters and medals and murals and statues and—

Zuko looked like him. It came with the same vertigo of staring dead eyed at an optical illusion for an hour, one moment he was seeing Zuko, and the next moment he was seeing the President’s only son. 

Now _that_ made him uncomfortable, and he stared hard enough at Zuko’s face across the table that he was sure Zuko had grown uncomfortable, too. But then Sokka relaxed. 

Zuko was way hotter than the stupid ass President. And that was with a large and horrific facial scar, so, hah. 

His mind helpfully reminded him that now wasn’t the time to have a crisis about how hot his crush’s evil dictator dad may or may not be. “What about your mom?” Sokka asked, and then Sokka suddenly remembered that Zuko had already told him that his mom was dead, and he felt horrible. 

Zuko sat up straighter in his chair. “She, uh. Died. When I was eleven.”

Sokka felt like he was getting punched in an old injury that had never healed over, but, despite that, his voice came out even. “My mom died when I was ten.”

“Oh,” Zuko said, turning his head away. “Yeah, you told me.” 

He had? Sokka barely remembered half the things he said. “Yeah, I guess I must have.”

For a second, Sokka thought that Zuko might ask for more, might turn this interrogation back onto Sokka and his own issues, but Zuko kept silent. 

“You said you got discharged,” Sokka asked. “I think that means that you left the service?”

“It means I was kicked out,” Zuko said, his voice tinged with an odd bitterness. 

“Kicked out,” Sokka repeated, raising an eyebrow. 

Zuko shifted in his seat until he could drum his fingers along the table. “It’s like this," he began, and then he spoke more words than Sokka had ever heard him string together at one time. 

Sokka quietly listened to his low, raspy voice.

"Everyone in my family joins the military. My father, my uncle, my cousin, my sister. I knew I was going to be joining up before I could reach the top cabinet in the kitchen, and I wanted to, Sokka. I had this whole idea that I was going to be making my country proud, that I was going to be making _him_ proud.” Zuko scoffed. He shifted the hand on the table into a fist. “And when I finally joined up, it was like I’d finally gotten everything I’d ever wanted. I was away from home, and I was doing what he wanted me to do.

“I tried to be good at it. I tried so hard to be good at it. But there’s really only one thing you need to do to be a good soldier, and it’s shut up. That’s what got me kicked out.” Zuko paused for a moment, indecision crossing his face, before settling onto grim determination. “I said I’d tell you everything and I’m going to do it.”

That was a bit worrying. Sokka met his eyes and nodded. 

“It wasn’t like they’d ordered me to blow up a school,” Zuko started with, which turned Sokka’s worry into straight-out alarm. “That’d be easy, wouldn’t it? Clear cut. Everybody knows it’s wrong to blow up a fucking school. No, the building was a warehouse at the edge of this nothing-town. I think it was for, like, furniture. At that point, wasn’t like I really cared all that much. I was— looking back on it now— I was so fucked up. I didn’t even know it, but I was so tired, all the time. I kept on telling myself to try harder and I’d stop feeling that way. Like if I started believing hard enough, I’d stop being so pathetic.” 

Zuko pressed his lips together, and Sokka got the urge to reach across the table and touch his hand, but he found that he couldn’t move, frozen at Katara’s dining table, listening to Zuko’s story. 

“Anyways. The warehouse was rigged to explode. I didn’t do it, another team did. I don’t even remember if we were given a reason why it had to go. I guess because— there were people inside. I saw them through the cameras. The warehouse had cameras in it, I guess I should say. So, the people. I didn’t think they were armed. They were just kind of sitting around on fold up chairs. Playing cards. I thought they might have worked there, or something. 

“The orders came down to me to pull the trigger on it. You know, I—” his voice caught, his eyes shifting away from Sokka to the wall. “I know I’m not a good person. I know that. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it if I didn’t see some of my own people in there.”

“Your own people?” Sokka asked, with dawning horror. 

“Not my team, but I’d worked with them before. I knew them. I guess they—” his voice caught again, “Nobody had told them about the hit. At the time, I thought it was some kind of mistake, and I called up my captain and told him that our men were in there, and he said, uh,” Zuko swallowed, “He said to do it anyways. And I argued with him, and I said to call them, to pull them out of there. They were our people.”

Zuko hadn’t looked back at Sokka since he’d looked away. His face was taught, eyes lined with pain. 

“I didn’t end up doing it,” Zuko said. “But someone else did. And I got discharged.”

Sokka didn’t know what to say to that. The words _‘and I got discharged’_ felt so trite paired with something as heavy as _‘but someone else did.’_ And yet, at the same time, they meant something heavy to Zuko, something that would lead him on a bloody path to where he sat now. 

“Getting kicked out of the military was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me, back then,” Zuko continued. “My dad— Ozai, he— He isn’t really an angry man. Which may seem surprising to you, considering everything he’s done.” Zuko flicked a hand at the newspaper. “But that was the first time he got angry at me. You— you asked me if he ever hit me, yesterday. And I said, ‘Only once.’ Well, that was it. That was when.” Zuko reached up and covered his face with his hand. 

“Shit,” Sokka said, feeling sick to his stomach. “Zuko, that’s— That’s so fucked up.”

“Do you—” Zuko asked tentatively, tremulously, “Do you want to hear more, or should I— I can just.” Sokka had never heard him sound so close to breaking, and it made him so angry that he could hardly breathe. “I can just move on.”

A part of Sokka wanted Zuko to move on, because he really wasn’t sure he wanted to know more. But another part of him felt obligated to know more— to know every single thing that that bastard man had done. 

“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to, okay?” Sokka said, trying to rein in the hot anger pulsing through his veins and make his voice sound comforting and even. “But I’d like to hear more.”

“All right, well,” Zuko said, in that same tremulous kind of voice. “Most people ask about the scar, so I guess you should know. That my dad held me down and poured boiling water on my face. Then he kicked me out of the house.”

For a single ringing second, Sokka couldn’t do anything. 

The question was the scar, of course. That was the first thing anyone ever noticed about Zuko. Sokka had always assumed that Zuko had been in some kind of accident. Maybe he’d been stuck in a burning building. Sokka had never asked about it because that was a real shitty thing to do to someone, and he hadn’t wanted to be one of those people who asked him, ‘ _What the hell happened to you?’_ It was like asking Toph why she was blind or asking Teo why he was in a wheelchair. 

Reality was so much more horrific than he had expected. 

The sound of his chair pushing back as he stood up was overly loud in the closeness of that small kitchen. Even the sound of his socked feet walking the scant distance to Zuko’s chair was too loud. 

Zuko jumped at it. He was staring at Sokka like he’d done something wrong, like he expected Sokka to yell at him or hit him, like Sokka was some wild animal that was about to maul him if he made the wrong move. 

Then Sokka was in front of him. Then Sokka wrapped his arms around Zuko’s shoulders and pulled Zuko’s face against him, into Sokka’s stomach. One of Sokka’s hands came to the back of Zuko’s head, fingers tangling in strands of his long, unruly black hair. “I’m sorry,” Sokka said between clenched teeth. He felt the weight of Zuko in his arms and clutched him tighter to his chest. “Shit.”

Sokka could feel Zuko trembling. Slowly, Zuko reached up and gripped Sokka’s t-shirt with one hand. He pressed his face against Sokka’s stomach, but he didn’t try to hug Sokka back. 

Sokka absentmindedly started stroking Zuko’s hair. “Shit,” he said again. That one word had eclipsed all of Sokka’s vocabulary. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. There probably wasn’t anything else he could say. 

He could have stood there all day, holding Zuko close to his chest. He might have done it, too, until Zuko finally asked, his voice muffled, thick with emotion, “What is this?”

“Shit, just—” Sokka choked out, hand freezing uncertainly on Zuko’s hair. “Just let me do this.”

“No, Sokka—” Zuko used his hand on Sokka’s t-shirt to push him slightly away, enough for Sokka to look down and meet his eyes, scrunched up with pain as they were, glistening with unshed tears. “I have to tell you everything or you won’t believe me— you won’t trust me— I know I’m a bad person but you know that I’m trying to do better— I’m trying to be better, Sokka, please, hear me out, please—”

Sokka brought both his hands to cup Zuko’s face, one side so heavily scarred. He wiped away the tears coming from his good eye with his thumb. “Hey, I know that. I know you are. It’s okay.”

“I’m so bad at doing the right thing,” Zuko choked out. “I couldn’t save those people in the warehouse. I-I broke my uncle’s heart. I left Azula alone in that house. I hurt you and Aang and the Avatar so many times— I can’t hurt anyone anymore, Sokka, I can’t do it.”

“That’s okay,” Sokka said, stroking his face. “You don’t have to anymore. It’s okay.”

Zuko scrunched his eyes closed. “Why are you always,” his breath caught, hiccupping around a sob that nearly tore out of his throat, “Why are you always so nice to me?”

Sokka wanted to pull Zuko to his feet and hold him properly in his arms, chest to chest. But instead he bent down to press his forehead against Zuko’s. “Because I like you,” Sokka said simply to the space of their shared breath. “Because I think you’re very sweet and funny and strong. I like that you’ve never seen a movie before. I like that you’re an incorrigible drug addict. I like that you told Toph that you were waving to her. And I don’t think that you’re a bad person.”

Sokka wiped away another wave of tears from Zuko’s cheek. Zuko’s jaw was clenched tightly to keep himself from outwardly sobbing, to keep himself quiet. “But you don’t know—” he said. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“I don’t know who that old Zuko is,” Sokka said. “But he’s not the Zuko I know. And I know the Zuko I know pretty well. I saved his fucking life, didn’t I?”

Zuko let out a breathy laugh and pushed himself forward, standing up, his face falling out of Sokka’s hands to press into Sokka’s neck. Sokka couldn’t have been happier to wrap his arms around Zuko’s shoulders, and he couldn’t have been happier to feel Zuko’s arms snake around his waist, clutching the back of his t-shirt. 

“I like you, too,” Zuko breathed into the junction of Sokka’s neck and shoulder, and Sokka clutched him, this incredibly precious man, impossibly closer. Sokka’s eyes fluttered closed and he pressed the side of his face against Zuko’s hair. 

He wished that they could stay like that forever. 

There wasn’t anything that interrupted them. Katara wouldn’t come home until the evening. Neither of them had a cell phone. Nobody rang the doorbell. But eventually Sokka said, gently, “Maybe you should sit back down.”

Zuko’s response was only an unintelligible grunt, and Sokka laughed. 

Reluctantly, they drew away from each other. Sokka rubbed Zuko’s arms, like he was trying to infuse some warmth back into them, and then slid down Zuko’s arm to grasp his hand. Zuko just kind of stood there. 

Sokka reached out and grabbed his chair and dragged it around the table until it was right next to Zuko’s. Sokka pushed down on Zuko’s shoulders like how’d you train a puppy to learn to sit. Zuko slapped his hands away, and his voice came out relatively normal when he said, “All right, I’m sitting, I’m sitting.”

“That’s a good boy,” Sokka said. 

Zuko folded back into his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “I can’t believe I said I liked you.”

Sokka sat down and threw his arm over Zuko’s shoulders, tugging him against his side. “I know. That’s so embarrassing.”

“You—” Zuko spluttered. “You said it first!”

“Yeah,” Sokka sighed. “It was so embarrassing.”

“How do I fucking deal with you.” To belie his words, Zuko nuzzled his head against Sokka’s shoulder. 

“Sounds like a you-problem. I’m a delight.”

“I guess so,” Zuko said glumly. 

“Now are you going to tell me what happened next or leave me off on this shitty cliffhanger?”

Zuko went very still in his arms. “Right,” he said tiredly. “What happened next.”

Sokka’s coffee had definitely grown cold at this point, and he dimly wished he had thought to bring it to this side of the table. 

“After I got kicked out, I lived with my uncle,” Zuko said simply. “Here in Ba Sing Se. He’d moved here after— after his son died in the war. He didn’t want anything to do with my father or Pyre, at that point, so he didn’t care that I was this huge laughingstock, this large stain on the Empire’s reputation.” Zuko was telling the story more to Sokka’s chest than he was to Sokka’s face, but Sokka didn’t mind. “I guess you wouldn’t know, but the President’s son getting discharged was a big deal. But Uncle took me in.”

The way Zuko said those last words in particular spoke of something very soft and heartbroken. 

“I was this twenty-two year old angry piece of shit, with no job, no money, no friends, and nothing to live for. But Uncle took me in. Let me stay with him. He talked about college a lot.” Zuko let out a shaky breath. “You know, his son never got to go to college. He joined up when he was eighteen, same as me, but died before ever leaving. But I think he was planning on leaving. 

“Uncle never really said much about it, but he had a lot of money saved up. I think it was supposed to be for him. And he—” Again, Zuko let out a shaky breath that tickled Sokka’s neck, “Uncle wanted me to use it. I think he saw my discharge as a chance for me to break out of that life. To do something better with it. He always believed in me, Sokka. I don’t know why. And then I left him. 

“It was about a year later that I think the Avatar was starting to become a problem in the city.”

“That must have been around the time Aang showed up,” Sokka threw in. 

“Yeah,” Zuko said dully. His words were bitter-edged, lacking in any enthusiasm. Sokka thought that Zuko wouldn’t have been telling any of this to him if he’d thought he’d had any other choice. “That must have been it. It was starting to become a big enough problem that my father wanted to put together a full team to take them out. And he called me up and he said he wanted me to lead it. I hadn’t heard from him in a year but I— I thought he’d never speak to me again, and he told me that this was my chance to— redeem myself, I suppose. It was so fucking stupid, but when he told me to jump, I jumped. 

“So that’s when I became the X-Soldier. Well, I mean— not at first. At first, I was just Zuko, the laughingstock of the entire military. It didn’t matter how good I was, how hard I worked— it’s so fucking stupid.” Zuko’s laugh was devoid of any humor. “People took orders better from a nameless helmet, I guess.”

“What a bunch of assholes,” Sokka said, pressing his face against Zuko’s hair. 

Zuko laughed again, but this time there was a little bit more humor in it. 

“Wait,” Sokka said slowly, something clicking into place. “The X-Soldier. The ex-soldier. As in— you were a soldier but now you’re not.”

“Uh, yeah?” Zuko huffed. “What else did you think it meant?”

Sokka ran his free hand down his face. “Oh my fucking— I’m so dumb. How did I miss that? It was literally right in front of me!”

Zuko huffed another dry laugh. “What?”

“I thought it was an intimidation tactic!” Sokka exclaimed. 

“You thought it was intimidating?” Zuko asked, sounding honestly confused. 

Sokka shook Zuko back and forth in his arms. “What do you _mean?_ You’re scary!”

“Really?” 

Sokka couldn’t believe that Zuko could be this un-self-aware. “You did not hear this from me, but you’re pretty intimidating, dude.” Sokka bapped Zuko’s nose with his finger. “You’re a pretty scary guy.”

Zuko’s eyes had grown cross-eyed following the trajectory of Sokka’s finger. 

Right now Zuko was about as scary as a newborn kitten, but Sokka was going to keep that to himself. 

“Sorry?” Zuko tried, as if he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be apologizing but playing it safe regardless. 

“Oh, shut up,” Sokka sighed. “Go back to the part where you hunted us throughout the city and why you aren’t anymore.”

Zuko’s face fell and Sokka was about to berate himself for being tone deaf, when Zuko’s expression shifted back to grim determination. “You already know about that time I broke Aang out of custody.”

“I do,” Sokka said. 

“That was part of it.” He pressed his lips together. “A warrant went out for my uncle. Apparently, he’d been suspected of helping the Avatar. That’s why I didn’t know where he was. He’s still wanted, out there. That was part of it, too. 

“But— okay. I’m not entirely sure what happened. My father was coming to visit the Palace. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, not since I got discharged. I was thinking about my father coming to visit, and I was alone in my shitty room in the barracks, and I was thinking about my uncle, and I was thinking about my father talking to me, and I fell to my knees sobbing because I knew that I could never undo what I had done.” Zuko grew quiet, burying his face into Sokka’s shoulder. 

Sokka ran a hand over his back, rubbing in gentle circles. 

“I snapped,” Zuko said. “I broke. I’m not okay. I walked up to my father and told him that I wasn’t going to take orders from him anymore, and I expected him to kill me. I think I wanted him to kill me.”

Sokka tightened his grip around Zuko’s shoulders. 

“We’ve created an era of fear in the world. And I know that I helped make the world this way, and I know I can’t ever escape from that. But I firmly believe that if we don’t want this world to destroy itself,” Zuko pulled away to look Sokka in the eye, “We need to replace it with an era of peace and kindness. We need to replace it with people like you.”

Sokka felt his own eyes start to water. “Zuko,” he said. 

“Do you believe me?” Zuko asked, breathlessly. 

In that kitchen, with the noon light streaming through yellow-curtained windows, with cold cups of coffee and two chairs brought side-to-side, Sokka stared at this man with haunted, red-rimmed eyes and unruly black hair, with scars from war and scars from home. 

He remembered another time, in the dead of night, under a flickering streetlight. A man who was bleeding out, with no one to go to, no real reason to escape capture other than the fact that, ‘ _I was going to do the right thing.’_

Sokka had never been big on the idea of the ‘right thing.’ But maybe he could decide to buy into it, just this once. Maybe it was the right thing for Sokka to leave his apartment that night. Maybe it was the right thing to drag that injured man up four flights of stairs. 

“Do you believe me?” Zuko asked again, growing desperate. 

“I think Aang’s craziness rubbed off on me,” Sokka said. “But I believe you. Fuck me, I’ll believe you to hell and back, I’ve believed you since I found you out on the street, and I’ll believe you until some asshole finally takes me down in a blaze of glory. You’re stuck with me, buddy. You hear that?”

Sokka cradled the back of Zuko’s neck and brought their foreheads together. He was smiling. 

“Try and get rid of me,” Sokka said, staring straight into Zuko’s somber blood-shot eyes. 

It seemed to take a second for it to actually dawn on Zuko that Sokka wasn’t about to abandon him for his sordid past. But the moment that understanding passed behind his eyes, his face transformed into the widest smile that Sokka had ever seen on him. His eyes scrunched up, his cheeks dimpled, and he let out an almost inaudible breathy laugh. 

Sokka felt his grin grow impossibly wider. “Are we gonna kiss again or what?”

“What?” Zuko laughed. 

“Aw man,” Sokka pouted, “I was hoping you’d pick the other—”

That’s when Zuko kissed him. And this kiss wasn’t in a dirty alleyway, and it didn’t smell like trash, but it did taste a little like tears. But that was all right. There would be another one. And eventually, they’d have to get it right. 


	12. entrance & egress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 6/28/20: Changed Badger's breed from Shiba Inu to golden retriever for seeing-eye dog accuracy.

Katara came home that evening with more take-out, because she was actually a divine spirit sent to bless Sokka’s humble existence with her light and goodness. She also came home with Aang, but Sokka’s main focus was on the take-out boxes. 

While they were unpacking the food onto Katara’s coffee table, Toph arrived with two new cell phones, still in boxes, and the five of them squished onto Katara’s couch, Katara and Zuko on the ends, Sokka and Aang in the middle, and Toph sitting on the floor, leaning against Katara and Aang’s legs. 

They spent dinner like that, propping their food on the coffee table, occasionally making comments about the latest episode of _Teran Ninja Warrior,_ mostly about explaining the show to Toph _._ Zuko was quiet for the most part, but occasionally Sokka would look over to find the other man smiling softly at him. Sokka would smile back at him with a mouth full of food, and here's how Sokka knew he had found the One: Zuko thought it was funny. 

“How’s the rat hunt going?” Sokka asked, at some interminable point later, when the TV was muted with commercials. 

Aang sighed and pouted. “It isn’t.”

“Fantastic news,” Sokka said. “Just what I wanted to hear.”

“I mean, we’ve narrowed it down to about everyone except anyone in this room,” Aang said. “So that’s good.”

“That’s not good, Aang. That’s the definition of not good.”

“Yeah,” Aang sighed. “It’s not good.”

“Listen, man,” Sokka said, clapping Aang deftly on the shoulder, “Don’t worry your empty little bald head. The Sokka is now on the case.”

The way Aang blinked doe eyes at him really got the point across that Aang really would like the Sokka to be on the case. The Sokka was happy to oblige. 

“We just have to set a trap,” Sokka said. “We have what they want,” Sokka jerked his thumb behind him at Zuko. “We just need to give it to them in a way that’ll blow their ass right open.”

“Gross,” Katara said. 

“Genius!” Aang said. 

“Nasty,” Toph said. 

“What exactly does giving me to them... mean?” Zuko asked, faintly. 

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that,” Sokka said to him, brushing imaginary dust off Zuko’s shoulder. “It’ll be perfectly hygienic.”

“Wow,” Zuko said, “I hate that.”

“I can’t believe I’m agreeing with Zuko,” Katara said.

“Katara, you’ll hurt his feelings,” Sokka said. “You have to say, ‘I can’t believe I’m agreeing with _Zuko_.’ That way you’re insulting Zuko and everything he stands for.”

Toph snorted, holding up her hand. “Nice one.”

Sokka gave her a high-five. 

“I’m breaking up with you,” Zuko said flatly. 

Sokka quickly spun around to face Zuko. “Wait,” he said, “We’re _dating?”_

“Sokka,” Aang gasped, covering his mouth, “You guys are _dating?_ But you were just so mean to him!”

“Since when did you guys start dating?” Katara demanded to know. 

_Dating?_ Sokka thought to himself. Duh. Of course they were dating. Obviously. Clearly. Sokka was a very smart man. Of course he'd _known_ that repeatedly kissing a man on the lips all day would naturally result in said two men _dating._ But this was the first time it was _explicit,_ all right? Let him live. 

Sokka returned to the conversation when Aang told Sokka, “I’m breaking up with you out of solidarity.” 

Sokka had to spin around to face Aang, now, feeling like he was getting pulled in four different directions. “I’m not dating _you!”_

“I’m also breaking up with Sokka,” Toph said. 

“Toph!” Sokka yelled.

“You better not have done anything on this couch!” Katara yelled. “I swear to fucking La, if you break his stitches again by having sex, I’m going to give _you_ stitches.”

“I’m leaving!” Sokka said, his only recourse, grabbing Zuko’s hand and pulling them both to their feet. “You’re all dicks and we’re leaving you!”

He dragged a hapless Zuko across the living room and hid them both in the kitchen, where they could hear laughter trailing from the room they’d just been in. 

He thought he heard Toph say, “I bet they’re just going to make out,” followed by more jeering laughter. 

Sokka crossed his arms and said, “Can you believe these chucklefucks?”

Zuko had that tiny smirk that said he was making fun of him. “Wait, you didn’t drag me in here to make out?”

Oh, is that how he wanted to play this?

“How could I?” Sokka spluttered. “You broke up with me!”

Zuko made a good show of tapping his chin in thought. “Maybe I could be persuaded to change my mind.”

“Oh-hoh,” Sokka murmured as he slowly slunk across the gap between them. He wrapped his hands around Zuko’s hips, effectively capturing him, and Zuko wrapped his arms around Sokka's back. “Is that so?”

Zuko’s smirk widened. “What’re you offering?”

Sokka spun them both in a circle and Zuko snort-laughed. 

“I’m fucking injured,” Zuko told him. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, your majesty,” Sokka said, leaning in to ghost his mouth along Zuko’s neck. He planted his lips in a barely-there kiss. 

Then he blew a raspberry. 

Zuko laughed and pushed him away, holding Sokka’s shoulders out at arm’s length. “All right, you asshole,” Zuko said, all sweet-like, like he was really saying, ‘All right, babe,’ or ‘All right, my love, my heart, my home.’ 

“Did I win you back?” Sokka asked, a dopey little smile on his face. 

Zuko shifted his hands off Sokka’s shoulders until they were circling the back of his neck. “Sure,” Zuko said, shrugging. 

“Nice,” Sokka said, and leaned in to kiss him, their lips sliding together in an already practiced motion, deep and wet. 

And then wet for another reason. 

It’s certainly an experience to be kissing someone and simultaneously be sprayed with cold water, but that was exactly what happened. Sokka and Zuko sprung away from each other, wiping water out of their eyes and off their faces, spluttering at the kitchen tile. 

“No kissing in my kitchen,” Katara said, proffering one of those tiny neon-green water guns. She pulled the trigger and Sokka slapped at the stream of water that hit his chest. She turned it onto Zuko, spraying him directly in the face, but Zuko, curiously enough, didn’t react at all. He just stood there and weathered it, his face despondent. 

“Why?” Zuko asked. 

Katara sprayed him again. “I actually bought this to cat-train you to stop smoking, but this works, too.”

“I’ll save you, Zuko!” Sokka said, and— very bravely, he might add — dove between Katara’s gun and his—boyfriend? His boyfriend? A stream of water hit the back of Sokka’s head and he allowed himself to collapse at Zuko’s feet with an outcry. 

Sokka reached up towards Zuko from the floor. “I’m dying,” he wheezed. 

Instead of grabbing his hand, Zuko patted it. “That’s rough, buddy.”

Sokka let his arm collapse back to the floor. “See if I ever die for you again.”

Zuko smirked down at him. “That’s the idea.”

Sokka couldn’t hold onto his act for very long. He thought that dying for other people was overrated, anyways. A one and done trick. Dive in front of a bullet, bleed out on the ground, and then your ticket was up. Maybe it would have been nice to think that someone else’s ticket _wasn’t_ up, that you managed to keep them that way, but that was a thought for a different time, when Sokka’s three closest friends and resident crush weren’t safely ensconced in Katara’s warm little apartment in the Lower Ring, as far from assault rifles and tear gas and bombs as they could get. 

Right now, things were very close to being all right. 

So Sokka dropped his act. He lumbered to his feet. “Katara,” he said ominously, “What have you done?”

For a split-second, Katara actually looked concerned. “What?” she asked, lowering her water gun. 

“You’ve uttered my code phrase. You’ve activated—” Sokka paused for dramatic effect, “ _The Tickle Monster.”_

Then Sokka sprinted at her. 

Katara squeaked and ran as fast as she could in the other direction, but it wouldn’t be enough to save her. He caught her around the middle in the living room and dragged her around in a circle, her laughter echoed by Aang and Toph, who’d started pummeling each other with pillows, just because those two lived for the stuttering heart of chaos. 

* * *

The next morning, Sokka reasoned that it was safe enough to return to his own apartment. If the surprise inspection was just Azula’s ruse to have them walk into her gentle and lovingly murderous arms, then there was no reason for it to extend the full week. Sokka grabbed Zuko, said his farewells, promised not to throw his new phone out of any moving vehicles, and dragged them down to the train station with his backpack of incriminating goods. 

There was still the question of Zuko’s compromised ID, but if it had worked in a taxi, then it would work on the train. That didn’t exclude the idea that they’d only survived the taxi incident because the guard in charge of checking for a twenty-eight year old man named ‘Lee’ in the Lower Ring was taking a piss, but Sokka was reasonably sure that wasn’t the case. And hell— if they did get arrested and/or shot when they got off at Sokka’s stop, then at least they would know where they stood with Azula. (And here people thought Sokka was a pessimist.)

Great news: they weren’t arrested and/or shot when they got off at Sokka’s stop. Two incidents were close to forming a pattern. It seemed like Azula really was keeping her word. The manhunt for Zuko had truly been called off. 

Sokka was eager to return to normalcy— to his own apartment and to his lab work, mainly. Those two things were basically everything that could be counted as normal for him, considering that he spent his free time doing all kinds of illegal activities against the government. 

They weren’t much, those two things— just a shitty place to sleep (or stare unseeingly at the ceiling, as it often happened), and a sometimes tedious but thought-provoking job, but they were a couple of core tenets of Sokka’s sanity, and he liked that he still had them around. 

He liked that he still had Zuko around.

When Sokka slid his key into his lock, he looked over at Zuko and winked. 

Zuko gave him a tentative smile. He didn’t know why Sokka had winked. Hadn’t figured it out, yet. 

Sokka swung the door open. He swept his eyes over the room, impassive. 

Zuko lost his smile. 

“Man,” Sokka said, “I really need to get a shoe rack.” He took a step into the room. The hardwood floors were covered in scuffed, muddy boot prints, overlapping with each other. He flicked on the light switch, and one of the three lamps crashed on the floor turned on. Sokka would have to sweep up the broken light bulbs first. He turned the light switch off in case it started an electrical fire.

Zuko was still waiting in the doorway. “C’mon in,” Sokka said. “Make yourself at home. Take a seat. I think we can dust the pieces of broken TV off the armchair and it’ll be good as new.”

Zuko seemed to stutter to life. He took a step inside, closing the door carefully behind him. “Sokka,” he said. 

Sokka ran a hand over the back of his neck. “I guess we can start by picking up the mattress. I don’t really think there’s saving many of the textbooks. We should get a trash bag. Unplug the lamps. I’ve got a broom somewhere—”

“Sokka,” Zuko said. Sokka thought he might have stepped forward but Sokka was trying to think of a way to salvage his vintage movie poster from that time he’d gone to see a re-run of _Jaws_ in the movie theater with his dad when he was a kid. 

Zuko grabbed his shoulders and Sokka drew his reluctant attention towards him. Zuko’s brows were furrowed, a heavy, angry frown marring his face. 

The poster. Maybe if he taped it. 

“You’re not reacting to this,” Zuko said, tearing one hand away from Sokka’s shoulder to gesture out at the devastation of Sokka’s apartment. “Why are you not reacting to this?”

“What do you mean?” Sokka asked. “I’m reacting. Look at me, I’m reacting.”

“This is fucked up,” Zuko said, furious enough that it came out as more of a growl, his hand forming a fist. “This is so fucked up. They’re just going to get away with doing shit like this, aren’t they?”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Sokka said. 

Sokka had only been to one movie with his dad, ever, in his entire life. That was back when his mom was still alive. 

“Sokka.” Zuko’s furrowed brow grew uncertain. Concerned. “You can’t tell me this doesn’t bother you.”

Sokka tightened his jaw. “Look. It doesn’t really matter. There’s nothing we can do about it. It’s over. I’m not going to freak out. There’s no point to it.”

Zuko threw up his hands. “At least admit to me that this is fucked up!”

“I just told you there’s no point to it.”

Zuko narrowed his eyes, frowning in a way that seemed hopeless, all of a sudden. “I’m not good with words,” he said. “But you don’t have to be strong for me. There’s no one else here.”

Sokka was clearly upsetting him, and he didn’t want to do that. He let his face go soft. “Let’s put on some music.” He reached up and held the hand Zuko had on his shoulder, entwining it between them. “Has Doctor Katara cleared you for dancing?”

Zuko’s expression didn’t really change. “You’re trying to distract me.”

Sokka swayed their hands from side to side. “Is it working?”

“Why are you doing this?” Zuko asked. 

“I’m not doing anything.” 

“Would it—” Zuko started, hesitantly, “Would it make you feel better to pretend that it doesn’t bother you?” 

“Nothing’s going to make me feel better,” Sokka said, colder than he had intended it to be. “And in case you haven’t noticed, it’s not like this is a surprise. This is what happens when your apartment gets searched.”

“I didn’t know that,” Zuko said quietly. 

Sokka had to grow incredulous at that. “You can’t tell me you’ve never searched someone’s apartment before.”

“I didn’t do _this!”_ Zuko spat, gesturing outward. 

Of course he hadn’t. Sokka found it endearing, in a way. Of course he’d never think of ripping someone’s home apart. His beautiful angry ex-patrolman. 

“Well,” Sokka shrugged, “it was either you or the apartment. One of them had to go.”

Zuko looked a bit lost, now. “I caused this.”

“There you go again, blaming yourself. Least you didn’t apologize.” 

“But this _is_ my fault, you can’t say it isn’t!”

“It isn’t!” Sokka yelled, suddenly and completely fed up. “It’s _my_ fault.” He jerked his thumb at his chest. “I knew something like this would happen the second I decided to hide you from the patrol. Actions have consequences, Zuko. You and I both know that more than most people do. The world’s a shitty, shitty place. People do shitty, shitty things. And sometimes your shit gets fucked up, and all you can do is put on some music and dance with your shitty fucking boyfriend, and be glad that he hadn’t died five times over already. All right? Is that okay?” 

Sokka couldn’t seem to catch his breath. Zuko’s face was all screwed up, eyes heavy and pained. Sokka was gripping Zuko’s hand too tight, he knew. But so was Zuko. 

“This shouldn’t have happened to you,” Zuko said. 

“I’m glad it did.” The words came out defiant. Demanding the universe to try to disagree with him. “If it didn’t, I wouldn’t have anyone to dance with.”

Zuko got a watery smile, tenuous as a taut rope. “You’re dead set on dancing, huh?”

“I fully expect us to both blunder around in circles to the beat, unless by some miracle you’re actually good at dancing.”

“I’m not.”

“Didn’t think so. Remind me to tell you about Aang’s _Footloose_ scheme, sometime.”

“I’m not sure I want to know.”

“I wish I didn’t.” Sokka loosened his grip on Zuko’s hand. “The scary part is that Aang has never even heard of the movie _Footloose.”_

“That’s a movie?” Zuko said. “I thought Aang was severing people’s feet for some reason.”

Sokka tilted his head, and he almost smiled. “Why would you just accept that, babe?”

“I dunno,” Zuko said. 

“Man,” Sokka sighed, and his chest was suddenly very tight with emotion. It made it hard to breathe. “You’re so dumb.”

Zuko’s expression grew dangerously close to a pout. “Hey.”

“It’s all right,” Sokka said. “I think it’s hot.”

“Why do I like you?”

“What’s not to like?”

Zuko ducked his head, shaking it with a smile. Sokka’s heart skittered around in his chest. “Congrats. You won. I’ll date you,” Zuko said. 

“I didn’t even know we were playing.”

“But on one condition,” Zuko said, stepping up to him, looking him steadily in the eye. 

Sokka felt himself grow somber. 

“It’s all right to be angry, you know?” Zuko said, with such a look of tragic understanding on his scarred face that Sokka had to blink and look away. Zuko reached out and cradled the side of his face. He ran his thumb under Sokka’s eye. He tugged Sokka closer, and Sokka seemed to fall into his arms, his head lying heavily on Zuko’s shoulder. “We’ll get through this.”

“Right,” Sokka said. The tightness in his chest wouldn’t go away. 

Zuko’s hand was warm on the back of his neck. His calloused fingers, used for nothing but violence, were very gentle. Sokka wondered if he’d ever comforted someone like this before. 

“You’ve been really good to me,” Zuko said, and Sokka felt the vibration of his chest with each softly spoken word. “I wanna be good to you.”

“Hey,” Sokka tried for a wet laugh. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” Zuko said, tightening his arms around him. “Anything.”

That was enough for them.

Sokka wasn’t a crier. He hadn’t cried more than once in the past ten years. He didn’t end up crying. But as Sokka stood in his wrecked apartment, he felt a little like doing it anyways. He was immensely grateful that Zuko was there. He couldn’t think of a single other person that he wanted there more than Zuko, at that moment, and it wasn’t because he was dating him at all. Zuko just— got it. Zuko got it. 

Sokka did put on music. He made jokes about Zuko being into emo rock. Turns out Zuko was actually into screamo. Sokka refused to listen to screamo on principle and Zuko said he understood, and they compromised with indie folk rock, which wasn’t a compromise at all because that was exactly what Sokka wanted to listen to. 

They levered Sokka’s mattress back onto his bed frame. Sokka dug out his ancient broom and they swept up the broken glass. 

Zuko mopped up the floor. Sokka taped up his _Jaws_ poster. They salvaged the ripped pages of Sokka’s electrodynamics textbooks. Zuko painstakingly stapled them together in the right order. They pushed his bookshelf back against the wall. 

Sokka spent a half hour breaking his broken TV down into spare parts, much to Zuko’s bewilderment, and Sokka told him that he did the same thing to his old broken toaster, microwave, and air conditioner. Zuko asked him what the spare parts were used for and Sokka said they were mostly useless, though he’d used parts from the air conditioner to make a pumpkin into a speedboat. Zuko said he’d have to see that to believe it and Sokka laughed and said the pumpkin didn’t last very long as a speedboat. 

Sokka’s fridge had been left open, and so they had to toss most of the food out. Sokka trekked up and down the stairs three times bringing all the trash to the dumpster outside— including the carcass of the TV. 

Zuko picked up the lamps. He screwed in new light bulbs. Zuko vacuumed. Sokka swept up the broken dishes on the kitchenette’s floor. One of the broken dishes was Katara’s mug, and this made him pause. 

Sokka gathered up as many broken blue shards of the mug as he could. Zuko and Sokka sat on the kitchen floor and super glued it back together. It was missing a piece on the top lip, but Sokka still thought it was all right. He put it back in the cabinet. 

Then they were finally done. Sokka’s shitty apartment, back into order. 

They took off their shoes by the door. Sokka commented again on his lack of a shoe rack, but this time he added, “I really need a doormat that says, ‘Come back with a warrant,’ and that isn’t even a joke.”

“But they did have a warrant,” Zuko said, unhelpfully. 

“You’re right. Should make it say, ‘Don’t.’ As in, don’t fucking sass me, you asshole. I’m delicate.”

“Sure,” Zuko snorted. 

The only thing Sokka had in his pockets besides his phone was his small bottle of super glue, and so he threw that at Zuko’s head. 

“I’m injured!” Zuko squawked, catching the bottle of super glue in his hand like some kind of highly trained killer soldier. 

“Clearly not injured enough,” Sokka said, which was a pretty low blow, because Zuko kicked at his foot and would have tripped him if Sokka hadn’t danced away in time. “Okay, okay, you’re injured just the perfect amount, forget I said anything.” 

“Gee, Sokka. You always say the nicest things.”

“I do, don’t I?” Sokka said, taking this as his cue to slink on into Zuko’s space and snatch him around the waist. Zuko didn’t make any attempts to stop him. “I’m going to sweep you off your feet. Carry you off into the sunset.”

“But we just got here,” Zuko said, frowning. 

“Dancing!” Sokka suddenly exclaimed. “Fuck, we just did a cleaning montage, and we completely forgot the _dancing.”_

“All right, go turn on the screamo, then.”

“You’re a nightmare.”

Zuko leaned up and pressed a light kiss to Sokka’s cheek. “Sorry for being scary.”

Sokka tugged Zuko tighter to his chest, indignation lighting up his face. “I thought we agreed to never bring that up again!”

“Hm, I don’t remember that.”

Sokka groaned into Zuko’s neck. “Don’t tell Katara.”

“That you’re scared of your boyfriend?”

“I’m not scared of _you!”_ Sokka cried.

Zuko snickered. “Good to know.”

Sokka buried his head further into Zuko’s neck. “Shut up and dance with me, drug addict.”

Zuko laughed again. “Sure thing.” He said it easily, freely, like there was no other answer in the world that came as naturally as being kind. 

* * *

The next day, Zuko was well on his way to healing up. Physically, at least. But there were other kinds of healing, kinds of healing that led them here, out on the town on a bright, sunny afternoon. 

The Jasmine Dragon was a tiny hole-in-the-wall café between a laundromat and a sandwich place. Sokka must have passed it hundreds of times walking to work, but he’d never stopped inside. He’d never have thought in a million years that inside held Zuko’s on-the-run-from-the-law uncle. But here they were. 

Sokka had mixed feelings about the place. On one hand, it was very clear that Zuko cared about his uncle a lot, and he’d been there for Zuko at a time when no one else was. But another part of him couldn’t help but think that this was a kind of ending— that as soon as Zuko found his uncle he wouldn’t need the Avatar, anymore. Like Zuko was a ghost, passing distantly through Sokka’s life one moment and gone the next. 

Sokka didn’t want that. He couldn’t bear to have that, not after knowing what it meant to hold him in his arms. 

He studied Zuko’s profile and he decided he needed to stop worrying about stupid stuff when Zuko was here worrying about something much more real. Sokka was betting that Zuko’s sick-to-his-stomach expression was because he thought his uncle was going to spit in his face. And going by Zuko’s family member track record— Sokka wasn’t sure that Zuko was wrong. 

“Just be careful, all right?” Sokka said, resting a hand on his shoulder. Sokka knew that Zuko was thumbing his pack of cigs in his pocket like a madman. “If he’s a dick to you, I’ll go in there and beat him up.”

Zuko spared him a wan smile, like the idea of Sokka beating up his uncle was amusing, for some reason. “Thanks for coming with me.”

“I’d follow you into the boiling pit of a volcano, at this point,” Sokka said. “This is nothing.”

Zuko’s eyes scrunched up in a smile. “I’d follow you into a volcano, too.”

“Look at us. The height of romance,” Sokka snorted. He pushed Zuko’s shoulder towards the café’s door. “Now let’s stop flirting outside your uncle’s café.”

Zuko’s expression grew serious. He nodded at him, once, and then led the way into the Jasmine Dragon. 

The Jasmine Dragon had one of those cute, small-time shop door-chimes. Inside, there was a line of booths along the wall, as well as a few small round tables near the front window. Interestingly enough, there were even some barstool seats, near the counter. These were occupied with a couple of patrons. 

The barista was a cute girl with brown hair in two braids. The nametag on her apron said Jin. There were no elderly men in sight. 

Zuko and Sokka exchanged a look. Sokka nodded his head towards the counter. Zuko nodded and went up to the barista and said, with no preamble, “I’m looking for my uncle. I don’t know what name he’s going by.”

Sokka winced and covered his eyes. 

“Uh,” the barista told him. “Do you wanna hear today’s specials?”

Sokka peeked out between his fingers at this trainwreck. 

“I think he’s the owner,” Zuko said. 

“You think?” the barista said. 

“He could be,” Zuko said, which didn’t exactly inspire any kind of confidence.

“Look,” Sokka butted in, because he couldn’t let this go on any longer. “Is the owner here today? I know this is shady as hell, but if he is, can you go tell him that Zuko is here to see him?”

The barista frowned a little bit, gave a small lost look around the café, as if she wanted to pawn this responsibility off onto someone else, but evidently, there was no one else. 

“Please don’t rob us,” she said, and Sokka wasn’t sure that she was joking. 

“No, no,” he rushed to say, waving his hands negatively. “No robbing, I swear. We’re just friends of the owner and he told us to stop by, sometime. Nothing criminal about it.” Besides the fact that Sokka, Zuko, and Zuko’s uncle were all categorically criminals. 

“Hm,” she said dubiously. “Okay. So when I leave the counter to go talk to Mr. Mushi, nothing’s going to happen.”

“I swear to you,” Sokka said solemnly. “No robberies shall take place in this establishment.”

The few customers sitting on the barstools were definitely eying up their conversation. 

“Okay,” she said dubiously again. “I’ll go tell him that— Zoro?”

“Zuko,” Zuko said. “Tell him that Zuko is here to talk to him.”

“Okay,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of money.”

“We’re not going to rob you!” Sokka hissed out, pulling at his hair. 

She pursued her lips at him. “But will you, though?”

Sokka let out a sigh, and reluctantly admitted to himself that, now that the idea had been placed in his mind, he _was_ thinking about how he would rob the place. Not that he would do it! He would never _do_ it!

“We’re going to stand here quietly,” Zuko said with his easy surety. “These people can watch us.” He pointed to the few customers on the barstools, one of whom, a woman typing at her laptop, looked quite taken aback. 

The barista sighed in a way that Sokka decided meant she had abruptly given up. “I’ll be right back.”

She disappeared into a hallway behind the counter, where there might have been some kind of back kitchen or an office. 

There was a beat of silence. No one was behind the counter. 

Sokka opened his mouth. 

“Sokka,” Zuko said, giving him the stink eye. “Don’t make a joke. I know you want to.”

“Now, my dear Zuko, whyever would you assume that—”

“Remember when I asked if you were robbing me and you said, ‘Do you have any money?’”

Sokka winced. “That was an extraneous circumstance.”

“You’re an extraneous circumstance.”

“That hurts, you know. Words hurt.”

Jin returned from the back of the store with a spring in her step. She gave them a smile. “Looks like you were telling the truth!”

Zuko’s shoulders instantly tensed up. 

“Mr. Mushi was surprised to hear it, but he seemed eager to meet with you. He’s in his office in the back. He said you could stop right on by!”

That seemed good. Sokka patted Zuko on the back, and this jolted the other man back into reality. Zuko met his eyes, a quick, panicked look. 

“Go on,” Sokka said warmly. “I’ll wait out here.”

Zuko’s anguished look tore at Sokka’s insides. He thought, for a moment, that Zuko would ask him to come with him. Sokka would have been powerless to disagree. He’d meant what he said about the volcano. (Though probably not an actual volcano; those hurt.) 

But Zuko’s expression hardened to steel. This was something he needed to do on his own. Zuko nodded at him. 

Sokka winked at him. Shot him a smile. 

Zuko blushed. Ducked his head. Looked up and smiled, crookedly. Then he took off down the same hallway that Jin had just come from. 

Sokka watched him go with a churning sensation in his stomach. Hopefully it would be all right. Zuko deserved something to go all right. 

He turned his attention back to the barista. “See, what’d I tell you? No robbing at all. This isn’t a hold up. _Don’t_ give me your money. In fact, let me give you _my_ money. Could I have an iced coffee?”

Sokka sat at a round table near the front window, sipping his drink, bouncing his knee. He spent his time looking at his new phone. Zuko’s contact name was ‘ _Freeloader.’_ Sokka thought he was very funny, but now he wondered about the name. Zuko would probably go live with his uncle again, wouldn’t he? Probably better than living in Sokka’s shitty one room apartment. 

He frowned. He watched people pass by outside the front window. A patrol car whipped by, flashing lights and warbling siren. Where were they headed? What were they going to do? 

Fundamentally, nothing about this city had been fixed. From one day to the next, there was a war going on, in the shadows, in the streets, in the skies. But there wasn’t an X-Soldier anymore. Maybe that would make a difference. 

His pessimistic side told him that it wouldn’t. There was still Azula. There was still the President. But the Avatar would deal with them in time. Sokka had to believe that. 

The ice in his coffee had long since melted by the time Zuko came out of the back of the store. He was with an elderly man with balding grey hair and a thick grey beard, wearing an apron. 

“Sokka,” Zuko said with relief, upon seeing him, and Sokka gave him a cheeky salute. 

“Everything okay?” Sokka’s eyes flicked curiously back and forth between the older man, presumably Iroh, and Zuko. Zuko’s eyes were red and puffy. Iroh was oozing a kind of serene happiness that was like watching a gaggle of baby ducklings swim in a clear forest pool with a waterfall. Very bizarre. 

Sokka stood up to meet them. 

“Yeah,” Zuko said, in that gentle and kind way where Sokka knew he really meant it. “Everything’s okay.”

Sokka smiled for him. 

“This is my uncle,” Zuko introduced. 

Sokka bowed to him. “I’m Sokka.”

“I know,” Iroh said, a weirdly knowing twinkle in his eyes. “My nephew has told me a thing or two about you already.”

That statement suddenly plunged him into the icy clutches of a cold ocean. Oh dear La, how could he not have seen this coming? _How_ had he never even considered that this was exactly how it was going to end up— Fuck, fuck, Zuko just introduced him to his _uncle._ Shit, what should he say now? _I’d really like to bone your nephew?_

Sokka was _meeting the parents._

“Zuko is,” Sokka blurted, floundered for a second, and then landed on, “great.”

Iroh only smiled at him. “I think so, too.”

Well, that was incredibly sweet. Maybe this Iroh guy was okay. The way Zuko smiled at that seemed to be saying that, too. 

“Well,” Iroh drew out, giving them each a look. “I should be getting back to work. Tea doesn’t make itself!” He made a peppy fist at this declaration, and then left them both standing in front of Sokka’s little round table in front of the window. 

When Sokka judged it safe enough to speak without being overheard, he said, “He seems pretty okay.”

Neither of them took a seat, though they did lean against the table. 

“He is. Okay, that is. We talked things out,” Zuko said. “He doesn’t blame me for leaving him. He was just upset that I was hurt, and he told me that he was happy I’d finally found my own way. I never should have doubted him.” 

Zuko’s eyes were glistening with leftover tears, and Sokka was really happy for him. He rubbed Zuko’s arm. He wanted to hug him but they were in a public space. “Hey, I’m glad. That’s amazing.”

“He said I could come stay with him again.”

There it was, the words floating between them like gunpowder in the air, waiting for a single spark. 

Sokka didn’t miss a beat. “Are you going to?”

Their eyes met. Zuko’s expression was sturdy, faintly questioning. Sokka was solemn, the beginnings of a frown at the corners of his mouth. Zuko’s eyes drew down, as if drawn to that frown, then flicked back up again.

“You’d be safer,” Zuko said. 

Sokka narrowed his eyes. “Seriously?”

“Azula’s going to keep trying to get to you. I know her.”

“You think avoiding me is going to change that?” Sokka snapped. 

Zuko curled his face away. “What are you trying to say?”

Sokka wanted to draw his face back around, but he didn’t move. “Azula’s coming after us no matter what you do.”

Zuko tightened his jaw. “I don’t have to make you a bigger target.”

Sokka settled his hand on Zuko’s shoulder, squeezing once. Zuko was trying to look out for him, in one of the only ways he knew how. But Sokka wasn’t ready to accept that. “Here’s another idea to your shitty one. How about you stick around. How about you be there, next time she tries something.”

Zuko finally turned his red-rimmed eyes back to meet his. “I can’t see you get hurt, Sokka. Please don’t make me.”

Sokka couldn’t believe they were having this conversation in the middle of a populated café. He huffed out a sigh. “Dude, I can’t promise that. You know what we do.”

Zuko furrowed his brow. “Sokka,” he entreated. It was like he was silently begging, _Please give me this one. Please let me have this._

“I think you should be happy,” Sokka said sternly, cupping the back of Zuko’s neck with both hands. “If it makes you happy, go live with your uncle. If it makes you happy, don’t contact me again.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Zuko said, kind of brokenly. 

“I’ve gotten used to you being around, you know,” Sokka said. “I meant it when I said you could stay as long as you wanted.”

Zuko let out a strangled sound.

“Hey, Zuko?” Sokka asked softly. “Would it help if I asked?”

Zuko nodded jerkily. 

Sokka smiled. “Stay with me?”

Zuko released a sigh and lowered his forehead onto Sokka’s shoulder. Sokka wrapped his arms around him and fuck it— public place be damned. They were doing this. 

“Yeah,” Zuko mumbled. “Of course.”

The warm sun shone through the café windows and glinted off the empty table they stood in front of. Outside, the sound of busy city traffic trickled through, shouting people, honking horns. Another siren, more distant. 

The sound of clapping drew them away from each other. Behind the counter, there was Jin and Iroh, clapping their ears off. Jin wiped away an imaginary tear. 

The peanut gallery.

“Good for you!” Jin cried. She sounded completely genuine. 

“I’m going to cry,” Iroh said. “Look at him! Look at how far he’s come!”

The moment was so jarring that Sokka briefly thought that he was stuck in the middle of one of those prank shows, and gave a cursory look around for a hidden camera. Obviously, there was no hidden camera, and he quickly transitioned from confusion to mortification. 

Sokka was ready to die. This was it for him. He’d had a good run, busted in some patrolmen’s faces, kept his sister from getting into too much trouble. Even got to kiss a really hot guy a couple times. A pretty good run. Too bad he was dead now. 

Zuko turned patrolman jacket red. Sokka covered his face with his hands. 

“I’m going to kill them,” Zuko said, his voice strangled. 

“No, no,” Sokka mumbled. “Kill me first. It’d be easier.”

Zuko grabbed Sokka’s arm and started to drag him toward the door. Sokka’s feet were fairly unresponsive because he’d tragically perished. “Bye, Uncle,” Zuko growled. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

“Bye!” Iroh called, like Zuko’s angry tone meant absolutely nothing to him. “I love you! See you soon!”

Zuko paused right before he reached the door. “Love you, too,” he mumbled. Then he dragged Sokka outside into the cloying city air. The door chime went off. 

They paused outside for a moment, trying to reorient themselves on the pavement. Zuko’s face was still hilariously red. 

As soon as they looked at each other, they immediately burst out laughing. Sokka hooked his arm through Zuko’s and they started to stroll down the street, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder. 

“I don’t think I can ever go in there again,” Sokka told him. 

“I wish I could say the same,” Zuko said, dropping his shoulders. “But I work there.”

“You got a job!” Sokka crowed. But that meant— “Shit. I guess that means you should change my contact name in your phone.”

Zuko sent him a befuddled look. “Isn’t your contact name… Sokka?”

“At some point,” Sokka said mysteriously, raising his chin.

Zuko quickly drew out his phone and ostensibly checked his contacts. “All right, there’s five people on here, and only one of them is named ‘Sugar Daddy,’ and I’d just like to ask,” he sighed deeply, “why are you like this?”

“You’re my adorable freeloader, babe!” Sokka dropped their entwined arms to clasp their hands together. 

Zuko had one of his half-smiles. When Sokka squeezed his hand, he squeezed it back. “As always, that was mostly an insult.”

“Only like thirty percent.”

“Seventy percent.”

“Thirty- _one_ percent.”

“What a compromise,” Zuko muttered. “This argument is stupid. Congrats on winning.”

“Thank you,” Sokka said, and leaned over and pressed a quick peck of a kiss to Zuko’s scarred cheek. They were still out in public, after all. Zuko gave him a tender look. 

Zuko’s hand was oddly warm and rough. Sokka really liked holding it. He held it the entire walk back to Sokka’s apartment, and when they stepped inside, Sokka brushed his lips along Zuko’s knuckles, knuckles that had spent most of their life bruised and bloodied. 

“You’re a sap,” Zuko told him. 

“Only for you,” Sokka said. “Welcome home, sweetheart.”

Zuko turned disgruntled. “I barely let you get away with ‘babe,’ you are _not_ getting away with ‘sweetheart.’”

Sokka was nonplussed. He raised an eyebrow. 

“All right,” Zuko instantly caved, his stern expression evaporating into thin air, replaced with a shy smile. “You can get away with it.”

Sokka laughed, leaning forward to curl one hand along Zuko’s jaw, and pressed their mouths firmly together. Sokka still felt a laugh bubbling up in his chest, and his mouth involuntarily formed a grin, turning their kiss sloppy, uncoordinated. Sokka turned his face to press his smile to Zuko’s shyly smiling cheek, his breath dampening Zuko’s skin. Zuko’s thumbs were stroking the back of Sokka’s neck. 

Sokka pulled back just enough to sigh. 

“What’s that sigh for?” Zuko asked, all breathily. 

“You free next Saturday?” 

Zuko cocked his head to the side. “Why?”

“I’m planning our first date,” Sokka revealed. “I’m thinking you, me, candle lit dinner, romantic moonlit walk through the streets,” Sokka batted his eyelashes, dragging out the fantasy as far as it could go, and finished very quickly, “And baiting every member of the Avatar with your staged imminent demise.”

Zuko snorted. “Funny. Your _date_ sounds more like a _mission_ to me.”

“So what if we happen to give our first date a codename?” Sokka asked as sweetly as he could manage. “It’s Project Ratkill, by the way.”

Zuko rolled his eyes to the ceiling in a quiet show of fond exasperation. Then he settled his eyes back onto Sokka, sinking closer in their loose embrace, and slowly, a thin, savage smile took over his face. The ghost of the X-Soldier. “I’ll have to clear my calendar.” Zuko placed a smug kiss onto the corner of Sokka’s grinning mouth, “But I’m always down to kill a few rats.”

“Romantically,” Sokka insisted. 

Zuko let out a little huff of breath right onto Sokka’s lips. “Romantically,” he agreed, before their lips slid together, heated and brash with the knowledge that the world may be fucked up, but at least they had this. At least they had each other. 

The world could throw all the shit it wanted. Right now, Sokka was untouchable. Sokka was floating on a cloud of serotonin called love, and baby, nothing was going to strike him down. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In order to not make this the longest author's note in the history of author's notes, I'll try to keep this brief. 
> 
> THERE WILL BE NO SEQUEL, but thank you for the interest!
> 
> I encourage you to read my other ongoing work, [Dragon Moon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20032777/chapters/47437291), if you're looking for something else to read. 
> 
> Oh, and if you wanted to make fanart of this story, please do! I'd love to see it! 
> 
> [Click here to listen to my sirens & sleepless nights spotify playlist!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1T8of1CH1DhFnEYsi3l2Rb?si=7oWhlzxoTvavb53oqpyGvA)
> 
> Lastly, I want to thank everyone who has read this story. It constantly astounds me that people are so into this work. I tend to write things that are kinda weird and off-beat. I certainly had never expected that THIS story in particular would become so popular. I mean, an Avatar Modern AU? Not to mention that this story is actually my first serious foray into the romance genre, and kinda a side project, at that. _Thank you for reading._ I hope you'll stick around in the future for whatever other nonsense I'll cook up. ;)
> 
> I'll sign off with some headcanons in non-specific order:
> 
> \- Sokka has an effortless Air of Authority^tm. that's why the patrolmen in chapter 10 immediately trusted that sokka was a doctor even though he was probably wearing jeans. Everyone knows that Aang is the real leader of the Avatar but 9 times out of 10 everyone looks to Sokka before they do anything. remember when sokka missed that meeting? everyone immediately noticed that sokka wasn't there because his presence is literally THAT important. 
> 
> \- Sokka starts giving codenames to every one of his and Zuko's dates that often have nothing to do with the actual date. eventually zuko gives in and starts doing it too. i imagine if they ever got married it would be called 'CODE DRAGON WOLF' or smth equally as ominous 
> 
> \- whenever katara finds zuko smoking she finds the nearest source of water and splashes him in the face. could be water gun, glass of water, a watering can, etc. this results in zuko's fight or flight instincts activating whenever katara is nearby, and also an attempt to quit smoking
> 
> \- some aang backstory: he used to go to flight school before the call of Justice came for him. aang can pilot planes and helicopters really well. start talking about plane specs with him and He Will GO OFF. 
> 
> \- appa is the name of aang's orange and white cessna skycatcher (a type of private plane). aang stole it from flight school and has it stashed somewhere in the city. aang's attachment to the plane is bordering on unhealthy
> 
> \- momo is aang's ring-tailed lemur. it is a very illegal pet to have. nobody knows how he got it and everyone's too afraid to ask

**Author's Note:**

> [ talk to me on my tumblr ](https://satirewrites.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I'll make a brief note about the black lives matter movement and police brutality in america, just because this story in particular features a surprising amount of parallels to reality that I did not intend when I started writing it in oct 2019 - all cops are bastards. i hope this story helps reflect the fact that all cops are bastards
> 
> [ If you would like to make a contribution to the BLM movement on this fics behalf, click this link to see charities that I'm supporting! And if you enjoy my art, send me a screenshot of your donation, and I'll draw something for you! ](https://satirewrites.tumblr.com/post/621017930798383104/some-people-have-expressed-interest-in-my-fics)
> 
>   
> Tumblr user [@just-another-trans-twink](https://just-another-trans-twink.tumblr.com/) made some art for this story! [ Click here to see it!](https://just-another-trans-twink.tumblr.com/post/620148945054728192/so-i-read-satirewrites-fic-sirens-sleepless)  
> 
> 
> **Incomplete List of Art I've Created For This Story:**  
> [ Zuko that Sexy Man](https://satirewrites.tumblr.com/post/617619209114042368/modern-au-zuko-from-sirens-sleepless-nights)  
> [ Zuko and Sokka Chatting ](https://satirewrites.tumblr.com/post/613877705862152192/zuko-and-sokka-from-sirens-sleepless-nights)  
> [ Sketch of Zuko in Uniform ](https://satirewrites.tumblr.com/post/613582972874031104/sorta-what-zuko-looks-like-in-sirens-sleepless)  
> [ Another Zuko in Uniform ](https://satirewrites.tumblr.com/post/189796681310/satirewrites-modern-au-zuko-to-go-with-a)  
> [ Zuko Smoking](https://satirewrites.tumblr.com/post/614140138577084416/zuko-from-sirens-sleepless-nights)  
> 


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